Work

Do AI Assistants Help Students Write Formal Specifications? A Study with ChatGPT and the B-Method

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of AI assistants, specifically OpenAI's ChatGPT, in teaching formal methods (FM) to undergraduate students, using the B-method as a formal specification technique. While existing studies demonstrate the effectiveness of AI in coding tasks, no study reports on its impact on formal specifications. We examine whether ChatGPT provides an advantage when writing B-specifications and analyse student trust in its outputs. Our findings indicate that the AI does not help students to enhance the correctness of their specifications, with low trust correlating to better outcomes. Additionally, we identify a behavioural pattern with which to interact with ChatGPT which may influence the correctness of B-specifications.

DOI: 10.1109/cseet66350.2025.00009

Authors: Alfredo Capozucca, Daniil Yampolskyi, Alexander Goldberg, Maximiliano Cristiá

Institutions: University of Luxembourg, National University of Rosario, Centro Internacional Franco-Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas

Language: English

Topic: Teaching and Learning Programming

Subfield: Computer Science Applications

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funder: Université du Luxembourg

OpenAlex ID: W4411234045