THE IMPACT OF CHATBOTS WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE PROCESS OF TEACHING PROGRAMMING COURSES

Abstract

From about November 2022, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) became available in most countries of the world. This is how the rapid spread of artificial intelligence (AI) in the information space began. From now on, it has become possible to delegate many time-consuming tasks to artificial intelligence. It was quickly mastered by, for example, copywriters, journalists, authors of texts from various spheres of life. Of course, the end result is not always a quality product. But in case of responsible attitude of competent specialists to the texts generated by artificial intelligence, it is still possible to achieve good results from the cooperation of natural and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence often becomes useful in education as well. But along with the benefits came new challenges. In particular, in the issue of copyright protection and in the field of education. Artificial intelligence has a very significant impact on the teaching of information technology courses. This influence is far from always positive. The work outlines the impact of AI on educational activity. It is about both the learning process and the teaching process. Two of the most widespread chatbots were taken into account: ChatGPT and Google Bard. The purpose of the work is to analyze ways to mitigate the negative impact of AI, namely, how to reduce the risk that students prefer to overuse the services of chatbots instead of completing the tasks themselves. The results of the research were obtained during the last years, when teaching programming courses in Python, JavaScript and PHP. Since such a problem appeared only in 2023, effective systemic solutions tested by time have not yet been worked out. The paper draws conclusions about how it is possible, if not to eliminate, at least to weaken the negative impact of chatbots on students’ desire to independently perform programming tasks. There are also a number of tips on selecting tasks for laboratory, control and assessment work. These tips can be useful for teachers of educational institutions of various levels. And ultimately, they can have a positive impact on the level of academic integrity of students.