  In November 2022, OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT, a chatbot based on
supervised and reinforcement learning. Not only can it answer questions
emulating human-like responses, but it can also generate code from scratch or
complete coding templates provided by the user. ChatGPT can generate unique
responses which render any traditional anti-plagiarism tool useless. Its
release has ignited a heated debate about its usage in academia, especially by
students. We have found, to our surprise, that our students at POLITEHNICA
University of Bucharest (UPB) have been using generative AI tools (ChatGPT and
its predecessors) for solving homework, for at least 6 months. We therefore set
out to explore the capabilities of ChatGPT and assess its value for educational
purposes. We solved all our coding assignments for the semester from our UPB
Functional Programming course. We discovered that, although ChatGPT provides
correct answers in 68% of the cases, only around half of those are legible
solutions which can benefit students in some form. On the other hand, ChatGPT
has a very good ability to perform code review on student programming homework.
Based on these findings, we discuss the pros and cons of ChatGPT in education.
