The AI program will also allow the course’s staff to save time by speeding up the grading process.

“Assessing, more qualitatively, the design of students’ code has remained human-intensive. Through AI, we hope to reduce that time spent, so as to reallocate [teaching fellows’] time toward more meaningful, interpersonal time with their students, akin to an apprenticeship model,” Malan stated.

The professor noted that he expects the early iterations of the CS50 bot to “occasionally underperform or even err” but anticipates that the program “will only get better through feedback from students and teachers alike.”