2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

With the creation of openAI’s ChatGPT system, a problem has arisen in introductory computer programming courses. Students now have the power to prompt ChatGPT with any computer programming question or problem they have and ChatGPT will generate a quick response for the student for free. Some computer scientists have predicted that by 2040 programming will become obsolete and the need for humans to know how to code will become useless because Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be able to do better than what humans do and faster. This study addresses this issue from the perspective of a high school student learning computer science through the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science curriculum at a public high school in California. After testing fifteen AP CS computer science course programming prompts and an open-ended project assignment, we conclude that in its current free version, ChatGPT was able to provide correct solutions about 66\% of the time. However, the solutions to the AP course assignments were not correct all of the time, and occasionally the solution includes a failing flaw that someone who does not know basic coding would not be able to identify or correct. The poster includes recommendations for AP Computer Science teachers from a high school student’s perspective.