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B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#21

Post by sjg007 »

autokad wrote: post #20
marsrover wrote: post #12

Pretty cool. It’s funny. Several times in my life I’ve seen the resumes of older people (70/80s) and they’ll have some generic degree that doesn’t exist today. I wonder if 50 years from now kids will look at our CS degrees like that.

I kind of have a problem with an BS in AI. the degree itself proves no edge over a BS in com sci / stats / etc. when applying for graduate programs, and there are very few positions in the field that would hire someone that was not a masters or PHD. However the same BS in AI isn't as applicable to other said undergrad majors. seems like someone would be limiting their options for little gains.

Looks like a CS core with a stronger math and stats component than the traditional CS degree. Then add in some extra AI courses (which wouldn't have really existed years ago as separate classes -- maybe 1 undergrad and a grad course in AI). Now you can do computer vision or NLP as classes in themselves. So it actually looks harder than a traditional CS major.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#22

Post by barry-cotter »

conbandit wrote: post #18

Really excited to see the Ethics Elective being a requirement for the major. Would prefer even more than one course, to be honest, but it's a good start. I feel like the ethics of AI isn't getting enough attention and by the time it does it might be too late.

Ethicists are no more ethical than other philosophers. There’s no reason to believe an ethics course has any effect on behaviour rather than fluency in discussing the topic.

Joshua Rust, Eric Schwitzgebel. Ethicists’ and Nonethicists’ Responsiveness to Student E-mails: Relationships Among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and Empirically Observed Behavior. Metaphilosophy, 2013; 44 (3): 350 DOI:

https://talkingethics.com/2013/11/25/why-arent-ethicists-mor...

• U.S.-based ethicist professors are more likely than other philosophy professors (60% vs. 45%) to say it’s morally wrong to eat the meat of mammals, yet the ethicists are no less likely than the others to eat mammal meat. • Ethics professors are also no more likely than other groups of professors to donate money to charity, donate blood to hospitals or the Red Cross, pay professional conference fees on the honor system, or respond regularly to student e-mails, though they tend to believe that these behaviors are more ethical. • And in one of the most quoted findings of Schwitzgebel and Rust, ethicists seem more likely to steal library books. They found that relatively obscure ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students are about 50% more likely to be missing, presumably stolen, than non-ethics philosophy books.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#23

Post by danielmorozoff »

I'm a bit concerned that this will be too superficial and not really cover ML or the mathematical foundations well. ML and 'AI' are very multifaceted fields that require a strong foundation in mathematics. As such, the lack of information theory, signal processing, fourier analysis, abstract algebra (from a mathematical standpoint) not to mention CS courses is disheartening. This seems like a major tailored to the strong need for ML talent / skyrocketing job prospects/salaries as opposed to fundamental understanding- basically trying to attract students. For example the whole concept of Tensorflow is the combination of high dimensional tensors with the ideas of abstract algebra -- hence the name.

ML/AI imho should be broached at the Masters level for those who are interested as they have strong foundational knowledge.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#25

Post by rococode »

autokad wrote: post #20
marsrover wrote: post #12

Pretty cool. It’s funny. Several times in my life I’ve seen the resumes of older people (70/80s) and they’ll have some generic degree that doesn’t exist today. I wonder if 50 years from now kids will look at our CS degrees like that.

I kind of have a problem with an BS in AI. the degree itself proves no edge over a BS in com sci / stats / etc. when applying for graduate programs, and there are very few positions in the field that would hire someone that was not a masters or PHD. However the same BS in AI isn't as applicable to other said undergrad majors. seems like someone would be limiting their options for little gains.

I wonder if it's a matter of time? Right now people only hire for masters or PhD, but perhaps that's because most CS bachelor's don't give a sufficient understanding of AI/ML for those jobs. As more AI-specific programs are developed by reputable CS schools such as CMU we may see that change and employers be more willing to accept BS degrees.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#26

Post by throwawaymath »

3rdAccount wrote: post #13
marsrover wrote: post #12

Pretty cool. It’s funny. Several times in my life I’ve seen the resumes of older people (70/80s) and they’ll have some generic degree that doesn’t exist today. I wonder if 50 years from now kids will look at our CS degrees like that.

Why I left the nano engineering program super fast. Come to find out, nobody hires for that. You can go into research only. While a traditional engineering degree can do research or thousands of jobs.

A traditional engineering degree at the BSc level does not do research. Any exceptions you can think of are rare and have more to do with the individual than the degree.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#27

Post by syntaxing »

conbandit wrote: post #18

Really excited to see the Ethics Elective being a requirement for the major. Would prefer even more than one course, to be honest, but it's a good start. I feel like the ethics of AI isn't getting enough attention and by the time it does it might be too late.

Most engineering degrees in the US require an ethics course (I think it might be a ABET requirement). Unfortunately a lot the course work is pretty boring. It doesn't really give you room to challenge your narrative but rather explain what you should do and should not do according to our "oath". They also give a ton of examples of what corruption is and you have to write a couple papers explaining your point of view.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#28

Post by bcaa7f3a8bbc »

the_greyd wrote: post #24
minimaxir wrote: post #4

The normal computer science curriculum at Carnegie Mellon is already more difficult than real-world AI applications.

Top post on HN year 2030: DeepMind's AlphaAI has graduated with B.S in AI, and has gained consciousness.

And since the AI knows how to design an AI system, it underwent an intelligence explosion and turned out of control...

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#29

Post by LanceH »

bcaa7f3a8bbc wrote: post #28
the_greyd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top post on HN year 2030: DeepMind's AlphaAI has graduated with B.S in AI, and has gained consciousness.

And since the AI knows how to design an AI system, it underwent an intelligence explosion and turned out of control...

Perhaps it will decide not to make something which could replace itself.

Re: B.S. In Artificial Intelligence – Curriculum

#30

Post by tlb »

barry-cotter wrote: post #22
conbandit wrote: post #18

Really excited to see the Ethics Elective being a requirement for the major. Would prefer even more than one course, to be honest, but it's a good start. I feel like the ethics of AI isn't getting enough attention and by the time it does it might be too late.

Ethicists are no more ethical than other philosophers. There’s no reason to believe an ethics course has any effect on behaviour rather than fluency in discussing the topic. Joshua Rust, Eric Schwitzgebel. Ethicists’ and Nonethicists’ Responsiveness to Student E-mails: Relationships Among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and Empirically Observed Behavior. Metaphilosophy, 2013; 44 (3): 350 DOI: h…

Fluency when discussing ethics is extremely useful when ethics are being discussed. Ethics of future AI systems will need to be discussed among all participants in order to improve the chances do the right thing. So i think it's very important that the tech people know the terminology, whether or not it makes them return their library books.
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