An Interesting Tool: AI

08 May 2026

Introduction

During the past few years, AI has been on an unprecedented upward trend. At first, people didn’t think much of it, but as it got smarter and faster, more and more people realized how important it could be. In particular, students in school began to use AI to complete essays, finish assignments, and create practice exams. For Software Development, AI is also an incredibly useful tool, as code is the building blocks for AI itself, and coding is a relatively straightforward, objective subject that the AI can be trained on. I had not used AI before taking this class, as I didn’t really feel like it was necessary, but during the course of this class, I learned that although it may not be necessary, it can do things much faster than I can, and it is much more efficient to use it as a tool. I used ChatGPT and Gemini during this course, but I found that ChatGPT was much better at coding than Gemini.

Personal Experience with AI

Experience WODs e.g. E18
- I didn’t use AI for the Experience WODs, as there was often a demonstration video explaining the solution, and I felt like I needed to know the fundamental information taught in the experience.
In-class Practice WODs
- I used AI for the In-class Practice WODs, as I knew I had more of a time constraint and wanted to see how quickly I could complete the WOD so I was prepared for the actual WOD. For example, I would ask ChatGPT to “read the instructions of the WOD provided and generate a list of requirements” before starting the actual WOD. From there, I would usually go step by step in the WOD instructions, having ChatGPT generate each step, and then checking if the code it provided was accurate or not.
In-class WODs
- I used AI in the same way for the In-class WODs as the In-class practice WODs, however during the practice WODs, I usually tinkered around more with the prompts and code, but for the In-class WODs, I didn’t want to waste any time, so I would just stick to what worked in the practice WODs.
Essays
- I did not use AI for the essays, as I felt that AI wouldn’t fully know what my past experiences or thoughts about a certain topic would be, and that it would be more work to provide it with that information than if I were to just do it myself. In addition, I feel that AI essays can often be too detailed and monotonous to read, so by writing it myself I could make it more concise and add some humor.
Final project
- I used AI for my final project, similar to how I did in the practice WODs, but I did find that I was using AI for a lot more of the non-coding process than before. For example, when changing the style of the application, I asked ChatGPT to “list various patterns and color themes that fit my website’s purpose”, to see what might look good. A lot of the times I was unsure of what was best, but asking ChatGPT to give me examples to look at definitely helped me make a decision.
Learning a concept / tutorial
- I sometimes used AI to learn a concept/tutorial, as some concepts can be quite complex. For example, I didn’t know what Prisma migrations were and what they did. I often got errors on my final project due to these migrations, but ChatGPT was able to explain them to me when I asked it “What are Prisma migrations, and why do I often get errors when creating migrations?” Using AI, I was able to resolve a lot of problems and learn more about what caused them in the first place.
Answering a question in class or in Discord
- I didn’t use AI answering questions, as I figured that if I knew the answer to a questions I would answer it, but if I didn’t it wasn’t worth going to AI just to ask it for an answer, as the other person who is asking the question could just do that themself.
Asking or answering a smart-question
- Same thing as answering a question, I didn’t use AI, I felt like if someone really had a question, they probably would have already asked AI for help if they couldn’t figure it out, so unless I already knew the answer, it would be redundant to ask AI again.
Coding example e.g. “give an example of using Underscore .pluck”
- I used AI a few times to give me coding examples, as I found it was very helpful in learning a concept. Most times, even if I just asked “what is ___” concept, it would end up giving my an example even though I didn’t ask.
Explaining code
- AI was also very useful when explaining code, as there was often times where I didn’t understand how the code it generated worked, but it was able to break it down and explain how it worked pretty well.
Writing code
- AI was a useful tool for writing code, as it could write code a lot faster than me. However, I did have to make sure to proofread the code it makes, as sometimes it can be confused or have small errors that need to be fixed.
Documenting code
- I used AI a little bit for documenting code, such as inline messages or comments in the code. Though I probably should have used it more, as there were sometimes I didn’t really have it explain what the code did in the code itself.
Quality assurance e.g. “What’s wrong with this code ” or “Fix the ESLint errors in ”
- AI was also useful for quality assurance, as there were often times where the AI’s generation didn’t quite align with what I wanted, and so I was able to ask it prompts like “How can I make this so it’s more like ___” and it would adjust it’s response to me. In addition, it was also very useful for fixing ESLint errors and resolving issues. There were times where I got stuck on certain dependency errors or strange path errors, and I was able to resolve these problems by showing AI certain files or screenshots. It definitely saved me a bunch of time.

Impact on Learning and Understanding

As I said before, I didn’t use AI before this class, so using AI was very new to me. I would say that AI has greatly influenced my learning experience, as before I would spend a lot of time figuring out concepts and completing assignments all on my own. After using AI, I don’t think I could go back to that method, as AI is really helpful in learning new concepts. I think the most useful thing about AI is that it is always available. Unlike a teacher or teaching assistant, AI can be talked to whenever you want, allowing you for near-instant feedback on anything, which is backed by sources and data the model is trained on. Yes, there can be flaws in it’s response, but that is also a learning experience, as you learn to how to engineer the prompt in a way to give you the best answers. I used to hear how AI is terrible for students, as they just use it to get the answers and don’t learn anything. However, I believe that this is dependent on how you use AI, if you just expect it to give you answers then yes, you won’t learn. However, if you use it to explain concepts, provide feedback, and compare it to your own jugdgement, you can learn a ton. For software engineering concepts specifically, AI has taught me a lot, as it is able to simplify the content and provide specific examples and use cases.

Practical Applications

AI is being used in many different ways in many different areas today. For example, a lot of websites nowadays have AI assistants that answers any questions you have or can direct you to the necessary resources. Industries like healthcare are implementing AI to diagnose patients. Other industries like agriculture, finance, and marketing are all looking into the applications of AI. In my opinion, I think that AI can be used in pretty much every area, but there it’s effectiveness will vary. When it comes to pattern recognition and analyzing data, AI is second to none. However, in more subjective areas, such as as art or therapy, AI will probably not be as useful, as it lacks the human touch and emotion that is needed in these fields.

Challenges and Opportunities

AI is very useful, but quite specific in what it generates. I often ran into challenges trying to come up with the right prompts to give it. In addition, there were times it took several tries to get to understand what I wanted. I used the $20 version of ChatGPT, which was pretty powerful, but when I tried using the free version it was quite bad, as it often came up with answers completely unrelated to the prompt or refused to admit that it had made a mistake.

Comparative Analysis

Again, I believe that AI can be extremely beneficial for students, but it all depends on how they use it. Aspects like engagement, knowledge retention, and practical skill development all can be built when using AI as a tool, but if students over rely on it, it becomes easy to not try to retain any of the information, or just have it do something for you and then forget about it.

Future Considerations

One way AI can be improved in software engineering, would be teaching students how to use the prompts in a way that provides them with the most information and feedback to improve their skills. I think it is vital that students know that AI is not just a free answer, but rather a personal tutor that can explain and answer most of your questions.

Conclusion

Overall, AI is a very useful tool, but with great power comes great responsibility, and the responsibility is to actually use the AI in a way that doesn’t hinder your learning. During this semester, I learned a lot about AI, and how useful it is for gaining feedback and gathering data. I don’t think I would have been able to keep up with the courseload if it wasn’t for AI, as it was super useful for all my classes. Going forward, I will continue to try use AI as a tool to learn. A recommendation I would have is to have an experience in this course that talks about how to engineer AI prompts to get the best responses and feedback. Something I really appreciated about this class was how the use of AI was encouraged. A lot of the classes I have taken are usually kind of vague on the expectations of AI, but in this class the guidelines were very clear, which allowed me to use AI freely.

AI was not used to write this essay.