An OpenAI staff member is clearing up the “misinformation” online and telling high school students that they should “absolutely learn to code.”

During a recent episode of the OpenAI podcast, OpenAI researcher Szymon Sidor mentioned that high school students still benefit from learning programming, despite the existence of AI coding tools like ChatGPT and Cursor that automate coding.

Sidor explained that coding education aids in developing problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. He emphasized that even if programming becomes outdated in the future, it remains an effective method to teach students how to dissect and solve problems.

“A skill that remains highly valuable is having a structured intellect capable of deconstructing complex problems,” Sidor remarked on the podcast. “While this may not always involve programming, programming is an excellent way to gain that skill, just as other fields that require deep thinking are.”

Andrew Mayne, the podcast host and former chief science communicator at OpenAI, concurred with Sidor. He shared that he learned coding “later in life” and found it an invaluable base for crafting precise AI prompts.

“When people suggest, ‘Don’t learn to code,’ I question it—it’s like having a pilot who doesn’t grasp aerodynamics,” Mayne commented during the podcast. “That perspective doesn’t make much sense to me.”

While Mayne and Sidor advocate coding education for high schoolers, another AI figure offers a different point of view. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, head of the world’s most valuable company, stated in June that AI levels the technological playing field, enabling anyone to generate code using natural language prompts with AI.

Instead of learning Python or C++, users can just ask AI to write a program, Huang explained.

Big Tech companies are increasingly turning to AI to generate new code, instead of having human engineers manually write it.

In April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that staff members were tapping into AI to write “well over 30%” of new code at Google, higher than 25% recorded in October. In the same month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that engineers are using AI to write up to 30% of code for company projects.

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