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Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#101

Post by abvdasker »

kendallpark wrote: post #70

If you are an undergraduate in computer science these days, it is very hard to get into advanced AI/ML classes, which are typically reserved for graduate students. Back before the ML goldrush, a strong CS undergrad interested in AI could elect to take advanced coursework beyond the introductory AI class. Nowadays, good luck getting off the waitlist! Having an official "AI major" does at least tell students, "Hey, we…

Depends on the school. At a good school you can generally always find the classes to learn what you want to learn.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#102

Post by vkjv »

3pt14159 wrote: post #99
learc83 wrote: post #49

This seems like a publicity stunt. It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. Why couldn't they just make this a concentration when it's so intimately intertwined with CS. The extra overhead graduates will have to deal with doesn't seem worth it. "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have…

It's always this way when new fields start. Give it time. AI leans harder on areas of knowledge that traditional CS treats as periphery like philosophy and linguistics. In a couple decades the field could be as separate from CS as EE is.

I agree, but I think this also supports the parent argument. CS and EE are not very different at the undergraduate level.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#103

Post by [deleted] »

exogeny wrote: post #95
kendallpark wrote: post #70

If you are an undergraduate in computer science these days, it is very hard to get into advanced AI/ML classes, which are typically reserved for graduate students. Back before the ML goldrush, a strong CS undergrad interested in AI could elect to take advanced coursework beyond the introductory AI class. Nowadays, good luck getting off the waitlist! Having an official "AI major" does at least tell students, "Hey, we…

I made the mistake my sophomore year at CMU of enrolling in a graduate-level economics class called "Game Theory" because I got my course prefixes incorrect, and assumed it was a CS class about video games. I am now much more versed in Nash equilibria than I ever thought I'd be, but damn, that class took a chainsaw to my GPA.

[deleted]

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#104

Post by gaius »

learc83 wrote: post #49

This seems like a publicity stunt. It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. Why couldn't they just make this a concentration when it's so intimately intertwined with CS. The extra overhead graduates will have to deal with doesn't seem worth it. "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have…

It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined.

If history is anything to go by they will graduate right into an AI Winter.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#105

Post by mlazos »

epicureanideal wrote: post #80
learc83 wrote: post #49

This seems like a publicity stunt. It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. Why couldn't they just make this a concentration when it's so intimately intertwined with CS. The extra overhead graduates will have to deal with doesn't seem worth it. "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have…

Well, that's basically what Computer Science degrees started out as, right? An Electrical Engineering degree with a bunch of software related electives? Even now, at UC Berkeley for example, "EE/CS" majors can choose a set of courses that end up almost exactly matching what the "CS" majors take, with not necessarily more EE. It's really just a narrowing of the electives. There are enough AI related courses available…

For me this just looks equivalent to adding a new major for every sub field of electrical engineering. Signal processing, digital circuits, analog circuits ... truth is a CS major could go take the same classes and a computer engineering student could also.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#107

Post by learc83 »

dgacmu wrote: post #79
learc83 wrote: post #49

This seems like a publicity stunt. It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. Why couldn't they just make this a concentration when it's so intimately intertwined with CS. The extra overhead graduates will have to deal with doesn't seem worth it. "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have…

It's not just predetermined electives - it removes several of the CS upper-division breadth requirements to allow more depth in AI/ML/stats. (I posted a comparison below, so won't repeat it here.) It's a pretty decent change to serve the students who really want to push more on ML. The key thing to look at is what the CS major requires that the AI major doesn't -- in 8 semesters, you can only fit in so many classes.

I looked at your description, and compared the requirements myself.

I'm even more convinced this is for publicity (or other political reasons). There's nothing there that couldn't have been done by very slightly altering the CS requirements.

If CMU had done that instead, students would have the ability to take more AI classes, but they wouldn't be at a disadvantage if they decide (or need) to work in another field of CS.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#108

Post by fixermark »

learc83 wrote: post #49

This seems like a publicity stunt. It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. Why couldn't they just make this a concentration when it's so intimately intertwined with CS. The extra overhead graduates will have to deal with doesn't seem worth it. "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have…

It shifts the core of the curriculum much deeper into the statistical mathematics and away from the "how the bare metal works" and forest-of-languages pieces of the CS undergrad degree. In particular, you can't generally get the CS undergrad degree without cap-stoning your experience with either a networking or operating systems course; this new degree omits both of those from the curriculum (but adds machine learning, modern regression, and a cap-stone of either natural language processing or computer vision).

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#109

Post by mjfl »

gaius wrote: post #104
learc83 wrote: post #49

This seems like a publicity stunt. It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. Why couldn't they just make this a concentration when it's so intimately intertwined with CS. The extra overhead graduates will have to deal with doesn't seem worth it. "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have…

It sounds like a CS degree where the electives are predetermined. If history is anything to go by they will graduate right into an AI Winter.

you mean that blind optimization of a black box might run into problems that can't be solved by "adding more layers"? I would never have guessed.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#110

Post by fixermark »

dgacmu wrote: post #68
sp332 wrote: post #2

What did they call it before? As the article mentions, CMU has been doing AI for a long time.

We never had a differentiated "AI" undergraduate major before. A student who wanted to concentrate on AI/ML would have used their electives to synthesize something they liked. The CS curriculum is: https://csd.cs.cmu.edu/academic/undergraduate/bachelors-curr... So that student would pick AI-ish classes using their applications elective and two CS electives. In contrast, the AI curriculum: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in…

As a CMU BS-CS graduate myself, the most obvious and startling shift is no OS or networking requirement. That alone makes it "not the Computer Science undergrad track" as far as I'm concerned.

(Not to mention the notable lack of the utterly gigantic forest of higher-level discrete math concepts and programming language theory. Were I in a place to re-do an undergraduate career, this would have been very appealing to me relative to what CMU offered).

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