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UMBC CMSC 471.02 Spring 2023
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

HWx : Experimenting with ChatGPT and Bard

Not required, only for extra credit

out Mon. 5/16, due Fri 5/26

Assignment repository invitation

This is an optional extra credit assignment that asks you to comment on the Teaching in the Age of AI town hall meeting, experiment with two of the new transformer-based chat systems, ChatGPT and Bard, and comment on their potential benefits and risks for education. When writing text for this homework you are free to use either system to help you generate your text answers. You should write your comments in the README.md file of your repository

These systems have great potential to make many tasks easier for people to complete online, but also come with potential risks. One concern that educators have is how they might effect teaching and learning. A recent "town hall" event for USM faculty, Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – Challenges & Opportunities, addressed some of these educational concerns. You can now see a recording of the session here.

Initial steps

  • If you do not have an account on OpenAI to use ChatGPT, sign up at https://chat.openai.com/ using your email address, or Microsoft or Google account.
  • To use Bard, go to https://bard.google.com/. You will have to sign in using a google account or your UMBC account.
  • Experiment with both systems and make sure you can manage to copy and save your conversations.

1. Your thoughts on Teaching in the Age of AI

If you were unable to view the presentation, start by viewing the recording.

Write a paragraph or two on how you think systems like ChatGPT and Bard might effect higher education. Did you find the Town Hall event useful in helping you understand their likely impact and how both instructors and students will adapt?

Here are three things to try on both systems. You may have to try several prompts to get a good response from each system. For each system, record the best answers you got, including (a) the system (i.e., ChatGPT or Bard), (b) the prompt you used, (c) the system's response, and (d) brief comments about the response.

2 Trying out ChatGPT and Bard

2.1 Hard Computer Science Courses

Use both systems to generate text describing what are the difficult required courses that an undergraduate computer science major in a university is required to take. Record the best answers you got from each of the systems, including (a) the system, (b) the prompt you used, (c) the system's response, and (d) your comments about the response.

2.2 Difficult undergraduate majors

Use each system to generate text about the most difficult university undergraduate majors, what makes them difficult, and why students are motivated to major in them even though they are hard. Record the best answers you got from each of the systems, including (a) the system, (b) the prompt you used, (c) the system's response, and (d) your comments about the response.

3. Generating some Python code

Get both systems to write a Python function that takes a single argument and returns True if it is a string that is special kind of palindrome and False otherwise. The palindrome string must only contain letters and cannot have numbers, punctuation, parentheses, or other non-letter characters. The string must have an even number of characters. The string cannot be empty. The first half of the string must either be all upper-case or all lower-case. The second half must be in the case different from the first half. Examples that satisfy this are FOOoof, xyzzyYZZYX, and Aa.

In your your comments about the responses, say if the code ran without errors, if you think it is correct, and if you consider it to be well written.