If AI can code, do we need to teach kids how to code too?

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

For years, coding has been thought of as a useful skill for children to learn.

It's integrated into computer science classes, and there are a number of organizations

dedicated to helping kids learn to code. But now AI tools can write code themselves.

So I asked Monica McGill of the Institute for Advancing Computing Education,

what does that mean for the future of coding as a needed or not-so-needed skill?

There was a report in 2021 that came out from McKinsey and company

and basically stating all future workers need programming literacy skills

and computational thinking skills.

And they're both

underlying AI. You can't really understand the mechanisms under AI if you don't understand computer science,

computational thinking, programming, and even data science. So yes, this is beforeteapete really launched and everyone jumped into that.

However, it's still not going to take away that if you don't understand how it's working,

if you don't understand what it's producing, then you can't really say what it's doing is

what you want it to do.

Is the use of AI encoding having any effect on coding education right now?

Yes. We know that students are using AI and teachers are a little bit more reluctant, but they're starting to adopt it as well.

So it's important to actually have students use AI. teachers are a little bit more reluctant, but they're starting to adopt it as well.

So it's important to actually have students use AI in the classroom as well when they're learning programming so that they can see what's happening. And the teacher can explain, okay,

this is correct. This is incorrect. Let's investigate why it is or it isn't correct.

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