Martin Kleppmann

that undermines the trust in the entire system and so we have to be very careful with how we approach this and to be honest we don't really have good answers yet so we do now for example have a boot camp right at the start of the first year for the new students to expose them to basic software engineering skills which is like this is version control this is unit testing this is generative ai

And the sort of basics that really everyone should be familiar with, and then the hope is that they will use that throughout their degree in order to just improve the work that they do.

But how exactly we handle things for assessment, for example, we're still in the process of figuring out.

Yes, there's a difference, though, which is in the desired outcomes.

I think with industry, generally, the desired outcome is like a working product, for example.

In academia, the actual artifacts that the students produce, like an essay that the students write, that's not really the point.

We don't ask the students to write essays because we love reading their amazing essays.

We ask them to write essays because we want them to go through a thought process which helps them learn something.

And it's that thought process and that learning which is really the desired outcome here.

And so that means that we do have to approach it a little differently because in

Generally in industry, you know, if you can use AI to get a job done faster and you get to an equivalent result, do it.

Absolutely.

Because that is the desired outcome.

Whereas in education, we do have to think about how we ensure that the learning outcomes and the thought processes are still preserved such that the students benefit intellectually.

The detailed methods of that study we might be able to quibble with a bit, but I think the general principle seems true that, yes, sometimes in order to learn something, you just have to struggle with it a bit.

Not struggle too much.

So if people are stuck on some technicality and they can use AI to get unblocked and then be able to focus really on the main learning outcome, then I think it's good to use these types of tools.

But if the point is to actually grapple with some difficult ideas and think them through,

in their own minds, then we need to still find ways to make sure the students are doing that.

The two really could be closer together because often they regard each other with sort of disrespect, really.