Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

cs.cmu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 362 posts

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#181

Post by srinivasan »

learc83 wrote: post #143
fixermark wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 functio…

>CMU doesn't generally craft their degrees for industry-marketability; I don't think a CS degree should be a trade program, but avoiding actively harming students job prospects by adding a few more electives isn't quite the same things as crafting their degrees for industry-marketability. >they tore out functional programming above 15-150 I'm looking at the requirements for the BS in CS right now. I don't see any fun…

15-210: Parallel and Sequential Data Structures and Algorithms, which is still required, is purely functional.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#182

Post by Retric »

smallnamespace wrote: post #178
Retric wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most CS programs have a lot of filler from the Math department and various other places. Your third semester of Calculus for example. So, I think their is plenty of room for 6-8+ AI focused classes which would get you reasonably far. Especially if it's a comprehensive major that covers both Major and Minor requirements.

Not sure how you're going to have someone understand gradient descent and backprop without having a strong command of multivariable calculus.

Going from 1 variable to 2 or 20 never seemed like a big jump to me. I can see taking 1-2 weeks to go over it quickly, but you don't need a lot of problem set's to get it.

It's like learning a new computer language, it takes about as long to do that on it's own as to have a class in something else that happens to use your that new language.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#183

Post by beojan »

Retric wrote: post #182
smallnamespace wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how you're going to have someone understand gradient descent and backprop without having a strong command of multivariable calculus.

Going from 1 variable to 2 or 20 never seemed like a big jump to me. I can see taking 1-2 weeks to go over it quickly, but you don't need a lot of problem set's to get it. It's like learning a new computer language, it takes about as long to do that on it's own as to have a class in something else that happens to use your that new language.

Line / surface / volume integrals are certainly a jump from one-variable integrals.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#184

Post by lallysingh »

smallnamespace wrote: post #178
Retric wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most CS programs have a lot of filler from the Math department and various other places. Your third semester of Calculus for example. So, I think their is plenty of room for 6-8+ AI focused classes which would get you reasonably far. Especially if it's a comprehensive major that covers both Major and Minor requirements.

Not sure how you're going to have someone understand gradient descent and backprop without having a strong command of multivariable calculus.

I'd assume you take multivariate, but skip on programming languages, digital design, and operating systems.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#185

Post by inputcoffee »

For those who don't want to click through all the links, here is the syllabus:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curricu...

It seems reasonable to me. They are required to take 7 humanities courses. I certainly hope they are required to take a lot of other classes where they are required to read, reason, and write.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#186

Post by inputcoffee »

jknoepfler wrote: post #164

I really do not like this move. AI and Machine Learning require graduate-level mathematical and computational skills. I don't think it's productive to pretend that we can train someone to be even remotely useful in these fields in four years of an undergraduate education. It sounds like an attempt to get around the fundamentals of csci to "skip to the interesting bits," which will produce graduates with a cursory kno…

okay, that is in theory.

Here is the syllabus:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curricu...

Do you think any part of that is unreasonable or putting the cart before the horse?

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#187

Post by jordancampbell »

jknoepfler wrote: post #164

I really do not like this move. AI and Machine Learning require graduate-level mathematical and computational skills. I don't think it's productive to pretend that we can train someone to be even remotely useful in these fields in four years of an undergraduate education. It sounds like an attempt to get around the fundamentals of csci to "skip to the interesting bits," which will produce graduates with a cursory kno…

This is completely untrue - machine learning is largely undergraduate mathematics - in fact a lot of the linear algebra is commonly taught in high school.

Definitely agree it's potentially narrow, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#188

Post by badminton1 »

jknoepfler wrote: post #164

I really do not like this move. AI and Machine Learning require graduate-level mathematical and computational skills. I don't think it's productive to pretend that we can train someone to be even remotely useful in these fields in four years of an undergraduate education. It sounds like an attempt to get around the fundamentals of csci to "skip to the interesting bits," which will produce graduates with a cursory kno…

You could also say computer science is just discrete mathematics, and therefore people doing CS should rather study math.

But we both know in practice they're substantially different lines of work.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#189

Post by fooker »

Retric wrote: post #182
smallnamespace wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how you're going to have someone understand gradient descent and backprop without having a strong command of multivariable calculus.

Going from 1 variable to 2 or 20 never seemed like a big jump to me. I can see taking 1-2 weeks to go over it quickly, but you don't need a lot of problem set's to get it. It's like learning a new computer language, it takes about as long to do that on it's own as to have a class in something else that happens to use your that new language.

I don't get this focus on 'maths via arcane problem solving' either.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#190

Post by fooker »

beojan wrote: post #183
Retric wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from 1 variable to 2 or 20 never seemed like a big jump to me. I can see taking 1-2 weeks to go over it quickly, but you don't need a lot of problem set's to get it. It's like learning a new computer language, it takes about as long to do that on it's own as to have a class in something else that happens to use your that new language.

Line / surface / volume integrals are certainly a jump from one-variable integrals.

Not a big jump, if you conceptually stick to the 'area under curve' definition.

Analytically computing surface/volume integrals, yes, that is a big jump. But I don't understand why students need to memorize N algorithms and M substitution rules for that.

Post reply on HN