This feels like a more useful CS degree, IMO. I don't do anything like machine learning, but for both scaling backend services and building day-to-day business logic, I've gotten a ton of value out of knowing stats, logistics, and a certain amount of pattern recognition (ah, how terms go in and out of fashion). Take this stuff instead of the other sorts of electives I was picking from - UML Modeling, for instance - and I think you'll be set up with a good broad base for understanding both code and machine learning applications, but also broader decision-making at a business level.
Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
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Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#22Do you call this Artificial Intelligence? I dont call this AI, I call this automation. I know AI is a buzzword, but unless something is trying to think, its not AI to me. What they are talking about seems to be automation through lots of code. But hey, I havent been keeping up with this field, not sure what people are calling this.
Ok, so now define "think".
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#23I think I now know how the electrical engineers felt in the '50s and '60s.
What do you mean?
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#24"AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation."
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#25My 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.
Could be worse, if you'd gone to Reading Uni around then you could have ended up with a Cybernetics degree from the Cybernetics department :)
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#26My 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'm curious to hear about your experience. In my mind, artificial intelligence can't be separated from computer science. In fact, I feel like you need a full Comp Sci degree before you can effectively apply your skills to real world AI challenges.
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#27Do you call this Artificial Intelligence? I dont call this AI, I call this automation. I know AI is a buzzword, but unless something is trying to think, its not AI to me. What they are talking about seems to be automation through lots of code. But hey, I havent been keeping up with this field, not sure what people are calling this.
> additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation How is this automation and not AI?
I probably wouldn't call it automation, but you could regroup all these under the term machine learning or data science and IMHO it would be valid. I think OP refers to AI as the autonomous agent type of AI. Conversation, understanding the world, moving & acting, planning & decision making, multi-agent collaboration, this type of stuff. Some of these might fall under machine learning, but I would say most are outside of the scope of machine learning -- and do not seem to be targeted by the so-called AI degrees. However, I think it's fine to call those degrees AI, because they are AI -- machine learning is AI.
The question is should we name this after the smallest denominator (machine learning) or the biggest one (AI). Also, in the short term future, more and more real AI (i.e., not machine learning) will probably be integrated in those classes, so why not skip one painful rebranding step.
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#28Is CMU trying to compete with Udacity? I personally couldn’t take a degree in AI seriously.
How many jobs could you get with a Udacity certification versus an actual bachelor's degree? On that note, how many people took the AI classes at Udacity after getting an undergraduate degree at a 4-year institution?
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI's curse is that once it becomes mundane people call it "automation". I think that having a focused degree in AI makes sense. I think that AI has reached the level of maturity that a separate curriculum should be made for it. Just as we had no distinction between computer scientists and software engineers we now face a world where AI and or Data Science require a different focus on education.
My only thought on that idea is that it feels like an undergrad in AI is less useful in the sense that most AI positions prefer PHD over masters, let alone undergrad.
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 stuff.
He (nor any of us that he pulls in for big projects) will never do research for MIT or OpenAI, but money is already being made in "AI." If his business ever explodes into a full blown company, these undergrads are exactly the kind of people he'd hire.
Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
#30A long long time ago, I got a Bachelors degree in Logic and Computation, with a specialization in Computational Linguistics from the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Carnegie Mellon. Seemed to be the closest thing to an "AI" degree on offer at the time, from my undergrad perspective.