Human Work and AI Delegation: Understanding Programming Students’ Debugging Process in the Era of Generative AI : The Influence of Generative AI on Undergraduate Students’ Competence and Perceptions on their Studies and Future Work

Sammanfattning

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become revolutionised with the introduction of new models such as ChatGPT, Deepseek and Grok. Because of the accessibility of these chatbots as well as their accuracy, the landscape of programming education has changed. Students now have access to AI generated assistance which can alter the programming praxis and eventually its implication on both the work of programmers and programming itself. Our thesis has employed an exploratory and qualitative approach to research the implications that the changes brought by generative AI has for programming students, especially within the domain of debugging. The empirical study was conducted with a combination of interviews and case studies. Our findings suggest that programming students use generative AI in a pragmatic sense, which means that they view it merely as an occasionally helpful tool. Moreover, the findings show that programming students are lenient towards using AI for debugging tasks, contrary to other undertakings such as code generation. This usage is primarily implied to occur due to the students’ wish of avoiding work on frustrating tasks as well as feeling shame from delegating certain assignments to AI. The study suggests that students of programming at undergraduate level are mindful about their usage of AI as they were especially careful not to overuse it, shown by self regulating habits. These findings contradict certain previous studies where students have been labeled lazy because of overreliance on AI assistance. The students show potential that AI can be integrated into study practice without being excessive, due to the students own motivation and self control to learn and prevail in their chosen field. The findings also show how students believe AI in their future workplace is inevitable and thereby believe that AI will lead to upskilling in the future workforce.