Scratch's official mission statement is to ‘Teach kids to code’ (well actually it's “to provide young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn”) Scratch is well over a decade old and so hasn't really been on the peak of innovation in the coding world. AI has already started influencing the coding industry, if Scratch was made to teach kids to code, and possibly find a career in the field they have failed. AI can already code, faster, for longer, with more knowledge of statistics to improve their work, and is able to read the code error messages given to it. To prove my point I opened up Chat GPT 4 mini it gave me 4 suggested options on what to ask it to do. One of them was asking if I wanted to have it code me “a script to automate sending daily email reports in Python” I said yes, in less than a second. It also showed me how to set it up and explained it to me like I was 10, it showed me an extra line I could use to run Linux/Mac, it also showed security. When I asked GPT 4 why it was better than a human it said this: I can access hundred of thousands articles quickly and accurately. It also said that it is better than a human since it doesn't experience fatigue or have human errors. It remembered to note that AI didn't have the creativity of a human or the judgement of a human and so while it can code basic emailing automation it itself cannot code a game or system that innovates to the same standard of a human. Don't you think you could be 50-150% more efficient if you used AI?

Now that we have confirmed that AI is a tool we should be using in our coding how would it work? It wouldn't replace the person rather be an assistant helping the person code, this would allow them to get passed tough points in their work, something it has already proved it can do in literature and other fields. This will also make sure that kids wont be able to cheat and make a game if it can only do co-pilot work. Along those same lines it will allow for a good first experience with AI and will let kids learn the limits of AI while also discovering this unique and innovative tool.

How would Scratch get an AI for its website? It must build it. Unfortunately this is a deal breaker for most people. Yet it is needed, GPT 4 cannot yet code in Scratch easily as it does not have the database, fortunately if Scratch rejects the idea now they can accept it when GPT can do something like that and work with them. Another reason to make an AI ourselves is current AI's have legal problems associated with their article sourcings, even though Scratch wouldn't use those same articles it would use the same AI. Furthermore current AI's are still in the earliest days of their largest years (we believe) and therefore are still (and probably always will) be collecting data. GPT even states not to put any personal information into it as it could be retrieved later from its source by HR companies. Yet another reason is the articles of Social media may have inappropriate words or phrases that the AI learns off of, because of this AI has its basis which can be racial these would be eliminated with Scratch creating their own AI.


Side note: this same AI could be used to develop the moderation AI even more

no support- too confusing for little kids, too easy to cause moderation issues, and the technical load would likely be too much for scratch. it’s already housing hundreds of millions of projects, users, and comments. (source)

sn4pdrag0n wrote:

no support- too confusing for little kids, too easy to cause moderation issues, and the technical load would likely be too much for scratch. it’s already housing hundreds of millions of projects, users, and comments. (source)

How would it be confusing? This site is literally about coding which is arguably much more difficult than typing a simple prompt into AI?
How would it cause moderation issues? It literally would be built from the ground up by developers hired by the Scratch team?
Exactly Scratch already has all the needed projects it needs to learn and pull from all it needs is the foundation to build up from. It wouldn't need to store much more data and even so it would be a one time storage, nothing comes in, nothing goes out.

No support, there's more problems than solutions. E.g. AI could generate inappropiate stuff out of thin air. Also, Scratch is made to “Imagine, Program, Share” so adding AI, be it the image AI the Scratch Foundation is currently experimenting with or a GPT-style text AI, it would instantly become “Ask, Prompt, Steal”.

A bunch of Scratch's current users (like me) would start logging out for the final time if AI gets added, meanwhile 5 year olds would rise on Scratch, making 100% AI-created brainrot “skibidi toilet ohio sigma” content.

AI TOPICS SHOULD NEVER COOK AGAIN!!!!
:speaking_head: :speaking_head: :speaking_head: :fire: :fire: :fire:
————————————————————————————————
fr though
if AI is added then The Rebels of Scratchers will declare
The Anti-AI Civil War on the entire Scratch continent
and ofc AI anit perfect and it can lead to inappropriate stuff

Please, not another AI topic… I've already made my stance on the uses of Artificial Intellegence.
-
AI in a generative form can look weird to most or all people, depending on how it is typed in the prompt (or any generator that supports the use of AI), and trust me on this one, because other think that this is not a good idea, AI can can take your job or fun away from anything, even coding.

If you don't believe me, see how AI is impacting jobs today for certain companies, organizations, and communities. There's less people working noadays. If this was implemented, Scratch would never look the same to people who enjoy the purpose of project and coding ever again. This is where innovating more people to make projects comes into play. Ai could take this opportunity away from new Scratchers, and already complete Scratchers on the website and inaccurately make something completely different.

I could make a whole and long essay on why Scratch Ai might be the worse decision to make on a coding aspect of this program.

Well, according to the ST's blog post on this subject from 2023, it's too unreliable, gives weird results, and biased (not to mention inappropriate content having a chance to be made and copyright issues) and be a good fit for Scratch until these problems are solved.

ojino wrote:

Scratch's official mission statement is to ‘Teach kids to code’ (well actually it's “to provide young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn”) Scratch is well over a decade old and so hasn't really been on the peak of innovation in the coding world.

Scratch isn't supposed to be this innovative new language that revolutionizes the ways that people code. It's simply a visual language intended to help kids understand the processes behind computer programming principles.

ojino wrote:

AI has already started influencing the coding industry, if Scratch was made to teach kids to code, and possibly find a career in the field they have failed.

Scratch definitely has not failed in teaching kids to code. Anybody who uses Scratch can learn to code in Scratch. That benefit is clear. I don't believe Scratch is intended to help others find careers, although Scratch may inspire kids to determine what they would like their career path to be.

ojino wrote:

Don't you think you could be 50-150% more efficient if you used AI?

Sure, in the same sense that we would all be more efficient in our calculations if we just used a calculator. So why do we still teach math to kids and expect them to do calculations without a calculator? It's for several reasons:

• You won't always have a calculator. (Yes, smartphones and calculator apps exist, but there are obviously rare cases where your phone is out of power, or it breaks, etc., and you still need to work through some calculations.)
  
  
• In order to even use a calculator, you need to have enough mathematical knowledge to be able to understand what buttons you are pressing and why, with a good understanding of what you would expect. (If you know that 48 + 73 is “probably like 100-something” and then you get an answer of 245 when typing it into your calculator, you'd probably conclude that you typed it in wrong. Without knowledge of basic addition, you might be misled into thinking that 48 + 73 = 245 is correct.)
  
  
• Some mathematical operations/processes are so complicated that many standard calculators cannot do them. (For example, my smartphone calculator app cannot take derivatives or solve equations. So if I have 100 meters of fencing for my backyard garden and I want to build a rectangular fence that maximizes the enclosed area, a calculator cannot help me figure out the dimensions of my garden.)
  
  
• Overall, math teaches more than just making calculations with numbers: it teaches patterns, logic, and provides skills needed to be able to solve problems in general.
  

To summarize, calculators assist in making calculations, and should not be intended to replace the human ability to solve math problems. I'd argue similar ideas could be said with AI. Indeed, mimicking the bullet points above:

• AI may not always be readily available or consistently reliable.
  
  
• In order to even use AI effectively, you need enough programming knowledge to know when to use AI and what outcomes to expect.
  
  
• Some coding practices (I assume) may be so complicated that AI alone will not be helpful.
  
  
• Coding teaches more than just computer programming: it, like math, also teaches patterns, logic, and provides problem-solving skills.
  

I want to emphasize that I'm not opposed to AI in general. When done well, it could be a useful tool. But I disagree with your main points in why AI is necessary — you seem to be suggesting that AI should be used even for beginners because that's just the way the world is progressing. The purpose of learning something for the first time is not to do it efficiently. It's to learn the basics of the concept, and then the shortcuts will be available when needed. (It's not easy to use calculators if we don't know basic arithmetic … it's not easy to use AI to code effectively if we don't know how coding works … it's not easy to read things if we don't understand the language in which it is written … it's not easy to play an instrument if we don't know how to read music … and so on.)

ojino wrote:

Now that we have confirmed that AI is a tool we should be using in our coding how would it work? It wouldn't replace the person rather be an assistant helping the person code, this would allow them to get passed tough points in their work, something it has already proved it can do in literature and other fields. This will also make sure that kids wont be able to cheat and make a game if it can only do co-pilot work. Along those same lines it will allow for a good first experience with AI and will let kids learn the limits of AI while also discovering this unique and innovative tool.

Sure, but Scratch is not necessarily the place to do that. It's similar to why text-based coding is rejected in Scratch, despite the fact that text-based coding is mainstream for most programming languages: Scratch is meant to teach kids the basics of coding. In order to understand how to code in a text-based language, you need to understand the principles of programming in general, which is what Scratch aims to help with.

ojino wrote:

Side note: this same AI could be used to develop the moderation AI even more

I don't think there is any “AI” used in moderation. There is some automated moderation at times, but I don't believe “AI” is used to do that.

What were you thinking (i just wanna know)

Dang, Za-Chary made a long post.

Dragonmyflesh wrote:

(#10)
Dang, Za-Chary made a long post.

I saw him do that before lol

(dang, not another ai suggestion..)

#8

Can you TL;DR this?

A-MARIO-PLAYER wrote:

#8

Can you TL;DR this?

TL;DR= Scratch is to help beginners learn programming, but AI doesn't need to be involved in that process of teaching kids to code. However, AI could be useful for after understanding the Scratch language.

ojino wrote:

(#1)
if Scratch was made to teach kids to code, and possibly find a career in the field they have failed. AI can already code, faster, for longer, with more knowledge of statistics to improve their work, and is able to read the code error messages given to it.

By saying this, you are effectively saying “coding is not necessary because artifical intelligence can do it”. Yes, it can do it. But by relying on AI completely, you will get rejected from being hired, thus failing your career. Imagine your application to a company simply being “I can use AI to code”. That will just get you rejected because you do not know anything other than to ask something that doesn't even know what it says for an answer.
Coding is vast as heck - There's A LOT of ways to write different functions, optimal or unoptimal;

Sure, you could probably learn FROM artifical intelligence, but it's explanations will be more lacking in a few areas than figuring it out yourself, especially reading the code yourself without requiring to ask it for what it does.

Scratch itself is simple, and almost all written functions are easily readible without asking anyone “what does this do?” - That's the wonder of it. You're there to learn, not just keep asking and try to learn from that. Having AI tutor (is that the word?) you will be much slower than figuring it out. For me Scratch made it easier to get what a different language function did before without even having to know what the heck it did, but without that I'd be left asking what it did.

You can debug it yourself, asking “I'm getting an error of (error). What is the cause here? (code)” will take away the satisfaction and huge increase of motivation from finally fixing a bug you encountered. That's the wonder of programming, learning from it and being happy you learned something and not in the sense of “memorized”, even if you got help, rather than a complete answer.

ojino wrote:

(#1)
Side note: this same AI could be used to develop the moderation AI even more

The moderation is not AI. It's humanhandled. The only bot (not art. intel.) that exists is autotakedown, but that's a separate topic.
EDIT2:
wonder how many more AI topics will appear this month btw

ojino wrote:

(#3)
How would it be confusing? This site is literally about coding which is arguably much more difficult than typing a simple prompt into AI?

You're immediently getting the answer without having to use your brain. That'll make things confusing, especially if you wanna work on a project without using AI. You'll build a reliance on it.

ojino wrote:

(#3)
How would it cause moderation issues? It literally would be built from the ground up by developers hired by the Scratch team?

You know what jailbreaking is, right?
And if I don't recall wrong, wouldn't training an AI yourself cost far over atleast 50 million USD?

Side note: this same AI could be used to develop the moderation AI even more

A significant number of scratchers already believe that the moderation is made up of bots. (which is thankfully, false)
If Scratch admits, 75% of Scratch will most likely explode

You saw the backlash that came from them saying they were just experimenting with ai. Considering that, I'm not sure this is something ST should add whether it's a good idea or not.
zydrolic basically got all my other points, soooo…

A-MARIO-PLAYER wrote:

No support, there's more problems than solutions. E.g. AI could generate inappropiate stuff out of thin air. Also, Scratch is made to “Imagine, Program, Share” so adding AI, be it the image AI the Scratch Foundation is currently experimenting with or a GPT-style text AI, it would instantly become “Ask, Prompt, Steal”.

A bunch of Scratch's current users (like me) would start logging out for the final time if AI gets added, meanwhile 5 year olds would rise on Scratch, making 100% AI-created brainrot “skibidi toilet ohio sigma” content.

I strongly disagree. If the AI is built from the ground up by Scratch nothing inappropriate could be generated especially since it could only develop code plus it improving on itself and would be trained to stop inappropriate projects making it pretty much impossible for something like that to be generated.
The AI like I said wouldn't come up with the idea, it would only help you when stuck to help you further your work and learn more, and how would you steal? They also would be unable to make 100% AI generated content as the AI would AGAIN be built from the ground up to stop that.

ojino wrote:

I strongly disagree. If the AI is built from the ground up by Scratch nothing inappropriate could be generated especially since it could only develop code plus it improving on itself and would be trained to stop inappropriate projects making it pretty much impossible for something like that to be generated.

That would be expensive and time-consuming due to the amount of widely inappropriate things that can be generated.

Also, AI can generate results that might not be what you wanted over and over again.

PaperMarioFan2022 wrote:

Please, not another AI topic… I've already made my stance on the uses of Artificial Intellegence.
-
AI in a generative form can look weird to most or all people, depending on how it is typed in the prompt (or any generator that supports the use of AI), and trust me on this one, because other think that this is not a good idea, AI can can take your job or fun away from anything, even coding.

If you don't believe me, see how AI is impacting jobs today for certain companies, organizations, and communities. There's less people working noadays. If this was implemented, Scratch would never look the same to people who enjoy the purpose of project and coding ever again. This is where innovating more people to make projects comes into play. Ai could take this opportunity away from new Scratchers, and already complete Scratchers on the website and inaccurately make something completely different.

I could make a whole and long essay on why Scratch Ai might be the worse decision to make on a coding aspect of this program.

Im sorry you are afraid of AI. Yet when you say ‘it will take away jobs and fun’ it wont. Many jobs wont be removed, just effected and optimized. People look at AI now as something that will remove authors yet it will only make more people able to become authors and express themselves more freely by removing writer's block. For many it will make the job more fun, AI does not create it helps move people forward and streamline innovation by removing the boring parts. Not only will that make the jobs more enjoyable and allow for more time away from work but it will also create many new jobs and remove older ones. Change is something humans don't like unless it is predictable, AI is not yet after change the world often is fine and even better. All I see that AI has done is helped people and companies. Grammarly wouldn't exist without AI, nor would apps that increase video quality, algorithms such as ones on TikTok, they are all AI even google search fills.

ThisIsTemp1 wrote:

ojino wrote:

I strongly disagree. If the AI is built from the ground up by Scratch nothing inappropriate could be generated especially since it could only develop code plus it improving on itself and would be trained to stop inappropriate projects making it pretty much impossible for something like that to be generated.

That would be expensive and time-consuming due to the amount of widely inappropriate things that can be generated.

Also, AI can generate results that might not be what you wanted over and over again.

AI learns from experiences all the repetition wouldn't be there unless it already was. The problem with AI isn't the AI itself it is the persons the AI learns from. We know it could be expensive at first but once you get it going it requires low maintenance