I started using generative AI tools pretty late compared to most students I know. My first real experience with chat-GPT was when I began learning how to code. During that time I often ran into small logical errors, where I used wrong operators or mislabel a variable. Finding these small mistakes on my own can take a few seconds or sometimes 10 minutes, before you realised that you didn’t capitalize a letter in your variable. Chat-GPT was wonderful in not only finding these small errors but also in grading my beginner code and offering possible solutions to problems I faced, which made learning code a lot more dynamic, because of the instantaneous feedback that I could receive.

At first, I was hesitant to try AI for my writing, because I didn’t feel confident enough to distinguish good writing from bad writing. Having dyslexia makes spelling words and structuring sentences particularly challenging for me. Even when I understood a concept perfectly, I often struggled to convey it clearly in writing. Hyperbolically speaking I thank god everyday for spellcheck as I still have memories of writing my notes on pen and paper with spelling mistakes in every other sentence. Forming coherent structures was unfortunately still a problem for me and AI has been a real big help in conveying my thoughts to text. I put my uncoherent rambling into a prompt and the AI gives me a polished version. That I can use to as a guide to rewrite it on my own words. This process helps me convey the tone and meaning I had in my mind that I couldn’t express in my own words.

For me AI isn’t a “put in the prompt and I’m done” experience. Instead it acts like a guide to where I want to go. The output in most cases isn’t what I envisioned, but it helps me clarify my own ideas and get closer to what I intended. It provides a structure to arrive at the result I was aiming for.