Harvard to roll out AI professors in flagship coding class for fall semester

AI has got a new gig.

Harvard is tapping artificial intelligence to help teach its most popular coding class next school year.

Starting in September, the Ivy League school’s Introduction to Computer Science, or CS50, will roll out a ChatGPT-like tool that aims to help both its human professor counterparts and students in the classroom, according to school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.

The “CS50 bot” will be able to respond to frequently-asked student questions and is anticipated to be a more accessible version of a classroom professor.

“Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher:student ratio for every student in CS50, as by providing them with software-based tools that, 24/7, can support their learning at a pace and in a style that works best for them individually,” CS50 professor David J. Malan told the paper.

Harvard anticipates that the CS50 bot will be able to use AI to help them find bugs in their code, give feedback on the design of student programs, explain unfamiliar lines of code or error messages, and answer individual questions.

Although similar in nature to ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot — which Malan says are “currently too helpful” — the CS50 bot both will work by “leading students toward an answer rather than handing it to them.”

The incorporation of the AI tool comes just months after Harvard implemented an AI policy, the paper pointed out.

As the university’s flagship computer class, CS50 was naturally the first to implement a version of its own.

Malan called the CS50 bot “an evolution of that tradition.”

The professor warned that he expects early versions of the CS50 bot to occasionally underperform or even supply students with incorrect answers.

“We’ll make clear to students that they should always think critically when taking in information as input, be it from humans or software,” he wrote. “But the tools will only get better through feedback from students and teachers alike. So they, too, will be very much part of the process.”

Though human course staff is currently beta-testing the bot in the summer school version of CS50 and plans to monitor its responses throughout the academic year, Malan said CS50 course staff have already been using software tools to make their jobs easier.

The department, like several other large courses at the reputable university, has been plagued by complaints of overworked and underpaid course staff, the report said.

Malan said he hopes advancements in the AI tool will decrease the amount of time professors spend on grading assignments.

Harvard’s open-arm acceptance of AI in the classroom comes as the computer tools proliferate the internet, blurring the lines of reality.

Catfishers have flocked to the tool to trick social media users into dating imaginary people created by AI.

Earlier this year, a New York attorney relied on ChatGPT to write a legal brief without realizing the tool cited multiple bogus cases.