Stanford's Code in Place lets students use AI freely — but they must explain their code live each week
chrispiech · x · 2026-09-29
Six years after launching Code in Place, Stanford professors Chris Piech and Mehran Sahami are adding two free courses: Code in Place X, which teaches coding in the AI age, and Probability in AI, which covers the math behind AI.
Code in Place X lets students use AI however they like in assignments — with one catch: each week they must attend a live section and successfully answer questions from their section leader. The bet is that explaining technical work remains a lasting skill even as engineers lean on AI to write code. Piech also argues the upper bound of people willing to spend 10 hours a year teaching could be close to a billion.
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