The undergraduate major in Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University looks very different now than it did when it started over half a decade ago.
“These large language models, you know, generative AI — have basically taken over, sucked all the oxygen out of the room,” said Reid Simmons, the program director for the Bachelor of Science in AI at CMU. “That’s what we’re focused on mostly, right now — really trying to make sure the students understand the technology.”
Carnegie Mellon was one of the first to develop an undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence, enrolling its inaugural class in 2018. Originally, Simmons said, the goal was to provide participants with a fundamental understanding of a broad and rapidly changing field.
“A lot of work in artificial intelligence is focused solely on machine learning, but there are a lot of other aspects, including things like search, knowledge representation, decision making, robotics, computer vision, natural language,” Simmons said. “All those fall under the rubric of artificial intelligence.”
Now, Simmons said, the number of classes dedicated to machine learning has exploded, going from one or two “basic” courses to “as many as 10” higher-level classes.
As AI only continues to grow in terms of sheer power and possible application, so does interest in learning how to harness it. In particular, Simmons said more students without backgrounds in engineering and computer science are showing interest in an AI education.
“We’re starting to look at courses that are more accessible to people without a strong technical background,” he said. “So that’s kind of the next step that we’re looking at, is how to kind of have an AI for all type experience.”
AI education for every discipline
A similar evolution is taking place at Johns Hopkins, said Barton Paulhamus, the director of the institution’s online master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence. As more and more people hear about AI, the program is receiving attention from a “broader audience.”
“What can we give them that they can learn about AI without needing to go through 10 courses of prerequisites?” Paulhamus said.
Originally, Johns Hopkins courses were targeted at “students with an undergrad in computer science,” Paulhamus said. Yet, “over the year and a half I’ve been there, we’ve been offering more courses towards the other extreme.”
Some are now geared towards students from non-traditional backgrounds, including “nursing, business, and education,” he said.
In addition to building out classes for the relatively uninitiated, Paulhamus said that the school is also working to increase the “breadth and depth” of courses dealing with generative AI.
“So, as fast as we can get the instructors on board and get the material created, there’s just an insatiable appetite for that right now,” he said.
Regardless of mounting interest unlocked by what he called the “AI boom,” Paulhamus said the program is still largely focused on what the school has identified as the critical elements of an education in AI.
“It’s more fundamental than the latest du jour thing, right?” Paulhamus said.
Demystifying computer science
Leonidas Bachas, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, said that students from disciplines “further away from STEM” needed a course to figure out “what AI may be for them.”
“We have a course that starts with data science and AI for everyone,” Bachas said. “The students will come in without any background in computing — they may not even know coding, but they get this teaser as a starter course through which they can become interested in the subject matter and then continue into one of these other programs.”
Bachas said the aim is to open up a field that can appear daunting to those without the prerequisite knowledge.
“In other words, don’t be scared about the field of computer science,” he said. “This is a computer science class for all, and then a data science class for all, an artificial intelligence class for all, to try to bring students slowly from disciplines that may not be accustomed to view computing as friendly.”
Mitsunori Ogihara, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at UM who helped design the university’s B.S. in Data Science and AI, said he hopes that students come to respect it as a core subject of sorts, much like mathematics. With greater understanding, Ogihara said, comes the lessening of anxiety surrounding potential ramifications.
“Whenever there is this new development that occurs, lay-people’s reaction is, ‘Oh, I’m totally scared of this. The computer scientists are conspiring to do very, very bad things to society,’” Ogihara said. “We want to remove that. So, the best way to do this is to educate the next generation, the people who are running the society, about how computing works, how computing could be useful.”
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