Earlier today I decided to begin using ChatGPT. Curiosity got the best of me. I asked ChatGPT to draw a square with Python. I’m very familiar with the ‘turtle’ module in Python and regularly use it in classes I teach for middle school students. The solution offered by ChatGPT was not one I had ever seen nor demonstrated for students. I was impressed and shared this on Fosstodon.org . Later I asked ChatGPT to draw and ‘isosceles’ triangle. I expected that it might use the ‘turtle’ module again but instead this time it used ‘matplotlib.’ Another unique solution. A response to my post on Fosstodon stated that the AI powered solution was merely repeating information that could be found with a ‘Google search.’ I liked the response and didn’t disagree. Fast forward six hours and I used ChatGPT to draw a circle with ‘C++.’ The code appeared once again. This time AI provided two possible solutions. I asked it to give me a Python program that would write haiku. Once again the answer was a code snippet I would not have thought of.
import random
haiku = [
"Autumn leaves fall gently",
"As the cool breeze blows softly",
"Nature's symphony"
]
print(random.choice(haiku))
I ‘Googled’ the same request and yes the answers were there but I had to sift through a couple of blog posts to find the code examples. I think AI is going to significantly change how we interact with knowledge from the internet and other databases that are connected to these learning engines. What are your thoughts?