Welcome to the Special Late Breaking Track on Programming with AI

Abstract

The narrative of AI ‘changing everything’ seems inescapable at the moment, with [ironically] programming being one of the first disciplines caught up in the storm. In order to understand the effects of a moment like this, it’s helpful to step away from the rhetoric of exceptionalism and look back at previous examples of such changes - 40 years ago Bainbridge [1] characterised some ‘ironies of automation’, ways in which automation wasn’t playing out as it was ‘supposed to’. Some of these ironies seem very present today in the supposed ‘unprecedented’ concern of modern AI - such as the responsibility for users to be ever vigilant of mistakes, or designers building tools that only solve the easy problems and leaving all the complicated tasks to the user. We propose to hold a special track at where late breaking content about how it will be to program with (or against) AI assistance (hindrances) can be understood.

Because of the rapidly evolving nature of the field we will accept submissions anytime up to the end of Feb. We’ll do a first review round at the start of Feb, and from then on make decisions as work arrives. (There is a fixed number of slots available, earlier submitted work is more likely to be accepted than later work).

In case of need, here are some topics that might help to get you started:

• creating programs with AI
• experience of programming with AI
• exploratory programming with AI
• live programming with AI
• program understanding with AI
• psychology of programming with AI
• user studies on programming with AI
• theories about all that

Correctness, performance, standard tools, foundations, and text-as-program are important traditional research areas, but the focus of this special track is on programming with AI. We welcome a wide spectrum of contributions on programming with AI.

Submissions

Submissions including critical perspectives and essays are solicited for the special track on Programming with AI (PAI/24). The aim with this special track is to focus on aspects of programming with AI assistance. The technical topics include exploratory programming with AI, live programming with AI, authoring with AI, program comprehension with AI, navigation with AI, programming learning with AI, and language engineering with AI. Submissions by academics, professional programmers, and non-professional programmers are welcome. Submissions can be in any form and format, including but not limited to papers, presentations, demos, videos, panels, debates, essays, and art. Presentation slots are expected to be between 20 minutes and one hour (if time allows), depending on quality, form, and relevance to the special track. Submissions of academic papers directed toward publication should be clearly marked, and the program committee will engage in peer review for all such papers.

All artifacts are to be submitted via EasyChair. Papers and essays must be written in English, provided as PDF documents, and strictly adhere to the ACM Format. If you are using LaTeX, please follow the ACM Conference ‘acmart’ Format (v1.77 or newer) with the ‘sigconf’ option and the BibTeX ACM Reference Format (‘\documentclass[sigconf,screen]{acmart}’). Please include page numbers in your submission for review using the LaTeX command ‘\settopmatter{printfolios=true}’ (see examples in the template). If you are formatting your paper using Word, please use the proper template from the ACM Format site and select the ‘sigconf’ style there. Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible. There is no page limit on submitted papers and essays. It is, however, the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read the paper. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper or essay if they do not find the initial part of it interesting.

Publication

Authors of accepted contributions will be invited to present their work at the special track. Remote participation will be ensured.

Academic papers and essays accepted for publication will appear in the ACM Digital Library (ACM DL) as part of the ‹Programming› 2024 Conference Companion.

[1] Bainbridge, L. (1983). Ironies of automation. In Analysis, design and evaluation of man–machine systems (pp. 129-135). Pergamon. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-029348-6.50026-9

Accepted Papers