Computer science has always been a field defined by rapid change. People in computing have always had to adapt to new technologies—or risk becoming irrelevant. There’s no question that AI represents a major leap forward, one that is changing how we work, build, and create. The field of computing will continue to evolve, but AI will now be an increasingly significant part of what we use—both as a tool to build with, and as a foundation to build on.
AI might lower the threshold to producing code or working programs, but it still requires effort on your part to produce good code. You still need to understand the problem space, plan solutions, evaluate the output of code, and ultimately make decisions. AI is not an all-knowing program: it is limited by the provided context, training data and objective, and the prompt you provide. There are a litany of other issues regarding areas like environmental impacts, data privacy, information transparency, usage costs.
Computing has always been about solving problems and creating new inventions by layering and leveraging existing technologies in innovative ways. That process of human-driven innovation will continue. It will evolve, just as it always has, but it will not disappear. There are still countless new things waiting to be discovered and created—and that’s what we will be doing. Computers won’t do it all on their own.
Discussion questions:
- What meaning does this image convey?
- Do you agree with the meaning of the image?
- What are the benefits of using AI to code?
- What are the drawbacks of using AI to code?
- What worries do you have about the future?