r/AskComputerScience • u/Some_Fly1628 • 12d ago
AI in CS/programming/coding
As someone who couldn't be farther away from this field, I started using claude recently for a project of mine and had claude code do all the work for me. Then I turned to my CS friends and they told me it was the same for them.
At one point I heard an argument that AI should be used to explain things to you or only do stuff which you'll understand afterwards.
What is it actually looking like at this state? Do any AI users in the space actually understand each function it sends out or are they trusting it blindly like me? This isnt an ethics question, just the reality of our current situation.
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u/donaldhobson 7d ago
It depends.
If you want to make something basically unimportant (a game, for the lols) and your current computer doesn't have any particularly vital files on it, go ahead, run whatever. Sketchy programs you downloaded from an obscure website and AI code are kind of in the same box here.
If you want to learn programming, you need to end up with some understanding of what the code does.
If it's important that the code works, be very cautious about using AI.
If your writing code for a space rocket, it's probably better that you just don't use AI. Or at least you don't use AI as an excuse to do less human checking.