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Generative AI Policy

Warning

Using AI tools to generate code for assignments in this course will violate the University’s academic honesty policy and will result in a course penalty and administrative action.

In this course, we will be developing foundational skills and knowledge that are very important to discover and practice on your own.

At this stage of learning, it is far too easy to overuse these tools and not gain the skills and understanding you came here for. Only as the problems you aim to solve grow in complexity will the extent to which the gaps in your understanding start to become a problem.

As a result, and to help avoid potential academic honesty issues — the use of AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Copilot to write code submitted for this course is not allowed at all.

As stated in the Academic Honesty policy, the code you turn in should be your own creation, not code that AI originated or in any way modified.

In case the above is not clear enough, here are some common scenarios:

Not Allowed

  • Sharing any part of the assignment specification with an AI tool. (e.g. pasting the README.md into ChatGPT)
  • Sharing your code with an AI tool. (e.g. "why isn't this working?" and pasting in your code, resulting in it fixing your issues for you)
  • Coding with GitHub Copilot (or equivalent) enabled in your editor.

What you may do with AI tools

  • Use these tools to ask questions on general topics. While I only have time in class to provide 1-2 examples on a topic, you may find it useful to explore additional ones by asking AI for more examples (e.g. "can you show me how to use a decorator in Python?"). This tends to work fine and avoids any academic honestly issues.
  • Ask AI to explain an error message to you. Instead of pasting in your code and saying "fix this", instead pasting just the error message and asking the AI how to diagnose the problem.

If in doubt, ask me before using any tools if you are unsure about this policy.