ksejas / gwu_coding_with_ai

Outline

• [5 min.] Welcome and introductions [Jason]
• [10 min.] What is Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) and how it works Visualization of how GAI works.
• [5 min.] Overview of Available GAI tools [Ryan] Current
• Microsoft Co-pilot [Describe - Ryan]
• OpenAI ChatChatGPT, Free [Justine]
• OpenAI ChatGPT4, Paid [John]
• Google Bard
• IDE integration
• [30 min.] Activity
• [10 min.] Tips for prompting [Jason]
• [10 min.] Pros and cons of strategies [Justine]
• Comparisons
• Limitations
• Ways to improve
• Ethics
• Using in class vs work vs side-projects
• [15 min.] Q&A [everyone]

Running example

Task: Create a chart summarizing climate change (changing global temperatures over time)

NASA data:

Charts: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures

Raw data (txt file): https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Global_Mean_Estimates_based_on_Land_and_Ocean_Data/graph.txt

Original source: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

Prompting Strategies

Go Deeper

• Provide context
• Provide language, packages in use, etc.
• Include the “role” you want AI to play.
• Be clear and specific with what you want in return.
• Anticipate ambiguity.
• Ask about required packages/libraries, they are sometime forgotten.

Broader/Bigger

• Initially ask about the problem you are trying to solve.
• Take a step back and ask if you are asking the right question (e.g., should I be using JSON or something else for this task?)

Ask for multiple solutions

• Ask for two or three options.
• Ask it to provide the simplest solution first.

Ask for explanation of the reasoning

• Ask for step-by-step instructions.
• Add that you want comments in the code.

Templating

Often times you can provide a template and chatGPT will follow it. Example:

You are an expert course designer and extensive experience developing college courses. We will co-design a course on using python to analyze data, assuming that students are total beginners to programming and using python. Provide an outline of the course syllabus using the following template:

---

# Course title
$course_title

# Course abstract
$course_abstract

# Learning objectives
$learning_objectives

# Grading
$grading

# Schedule of topics
#schedule_of_topics
---

This will generate a syllabus with each item in the $ section completed by chatGPT.