AI Use for Coding

[Shona B]

Hello, I was just wondering what the guidance is for using AI to write code (especially in relation to the Speech Processing assignment, for example to parse through the data and write a text file with selections). The guidance about AI so far has been to do with the writing only so was wondering if you could clarify the rules for this kind of use?

[Catherine Lai]

Hi Shona,

Based on our AI policy, you can use AI based tool to help with coding suggestions as long as you declare this in the report.

However, you should be careful to check that coding suggestions from LLMs as they can be incorrect, so to use this effectively you need to understand whether the generated code is good or not. The same advice applies to looking up answers to questions on websites like Stack Overflow (not all answers are good!).

Also, while you’re not being directly assessed on coding for this assignment, we do want you to learn some scripting skills. The best way to learn these skills in the long term is to try to figure things out yourself first!

cheers,
Catherine

[Simon]

Please read “Please briefly describe if you use any external Artificial Intelligence (AI) related tools in doing this assignment…” which applies to all use of such tools.

Whilst professional programmers certainly use AI “co-pilots” to write code faster, I strongly recommend against this for beginners: for one thing, you do not yet have the skill to judge whether the resulting code is correct!

You will learn a lot more, and build more confidence, doing it yourself from scratch.

[Simon]

You should also exercise extreme caution in uploading data to external AI tools, since they are likely to retain this data and potentially include it in the training data for a future update of the tool.

You do not have permission to share any of the data for this assignment outside the University.

[Author]

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