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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

#111

Post by smaddox »

vkjv wrote: post #102
3pt14159 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They certainly are at UT Austin! But UT Austin has a separate Computer Engineering degree that's very similar to EE.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#112

Post by fixermark »

QML wrote: post #78
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…

While there may be a lot of demand for AI/ML, I’m concerned to whether there are enough students with the proper foundations in math and stats to do well. New classes such as Data Science seem to just instruct students how to use algorithms and not why.

Looking at the curriculum CMU has put together (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curricu...), I see statistical fundamentals in the Math and Statistics Core. I expect it should handle the why and the how.

(... though I get the sense from the outside looking in that a lot of machine learning at this point is still a little bit alchemy, so there may not always even be a firm "why" answer to give. All the more reason to give students firm general fundamental groundings so they can seek out those answers).

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#113

Post by bogomipz »

harveynick wrote: post #13

My undergraduate degree (from The University of Edinburgh) is Artificial Intelligence. I remember when I was visiting different universities in the UK back in 2000, Edinburgh was the only one I saw which offered AI as a "real" degree. Everywhere else it was a specialization which was tacked on in the final year of a computer science degree. That seemed really odd to me then. Seems even odder now.

I would be curious to hear how different this proposed CMU curriculum is vs what you had in the early 2000's.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#114

Post by learc83 »

fixermark wrote: post #108
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 learnin…

It's a few classes. There is no reason they couldn't have just changed the requirement to OS, Networking, NLP, or computer vision. And made the ML and modern regression classes prerequisites for the NLP and computer vision classes.

A few very minor tweaks to the CS requirements is all it would take. But you wouldn't get the fanfare of launching a new major.

The advantage for students is that if they decide to pursue some other CS discipline, they don't have to explain their weird degree.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#115

Post by [deleted] »

mkirklions wrote: post #39
komali2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I've got a friend with a film degree pulling in decent money in Houston as a solo consultant (hiring contractors as needed (like me)), going from oldschool oil EPC to oldschool healthcare data analysis firms pitching "Big Data analysis" and "AI trained data modeling." Mostly it's plugging .CSVs into google's cloud platform tools, but sometimes I get to peek at some homebrew R or python modeling stu…

But this isnt AI. This is automation. I have done automation in python and I never thought it was AI.

[deleted]

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#116

Post by philjohn »

My degree was in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence way back in 1998 at the University of Birmingham (UK) - interesting to see not that many places offered it until recently.

Good to see that other undergrads are going to have access to AI/ML courses rather than them being solely for post grads.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#117

Post by [deleted] »

joker3 wrote: post #96
aje403 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, consider the flip side as well. This is just going to inflate the bubble more and create more unqualified candidates. AI degree means they're going to be churning out candidates who don't know what tcp is or what context switch means. Also, the guy with the (graduate or PHD) AI degree from CMU, before this, handing you his resume, may have studied functional analysis and convex optimization in addition to l…

How many people really need to know functional analysis to practice machine learning? How many developers need to know TCP coming out of school?

[deleted]

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#119

Post by fixermark »

learc83 wrote: post #107
dgacmu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CMU doesn't generally craft their degrees for industry-marketability; even the CS degree operates under somewhat of an assumption that they're training you to be a CS grad student or professor, not a software engineer. You can find your way out of that program without ever having touched C++, for example.

I think you're greatly underestimating how much different the CS curriculum would become if they tore out functional programming above 15-150, OS, and Networking.

Consider the flipside: if they bent the CS degree instead of introducing a new AI degree, could higher-learning institutions continue to trust that a CMU CS undergrad had a solid foundation in functional programming, discrete mathematics, and systems theory?

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#120

Post by srinivasan »

aje403 wrote: post #88
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…

Honestly, consider the flip side as well. This is just going to inflate the bubble more and create more unqualified candidates. AI degree means they're going to be churning out candidates who don't know what tcp is or what context switch means. Also, the guy with the (graduate or PHD) AI degree from CMU, before this, handing you his resume, may have studied functional analysis and convex optimization in addition to l…

> candidates who don’t know what TCP is or what context switch means.

Nope, look at the curriculum again.

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