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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

#91

Post by osteele »

Animats wrote: post #82
cjoelrun wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's referencing the beginning of "Computer Science" degrees. Computers were researched by electrical engineers and mathematicians before.

Yes. My undergraduate diploma says "Electrical Engineering - Computer Science". Computer science wasn't a full department yet.

Mine says “Linguistics”. I took CS graduate courses, but there wasn't an undergraduate major yet.

My father-in-law had a math degree and was a math professor, and then an EE professor — the latter while he co-founded an AI lab, that hired physics major Richard Stallman and other non-CS-majors.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#93

Post by learc83 »

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…

Many CS programs came out of Math departments (that was the case in my program).

To me, it's more a difference in degree than kind. To be effective with AI you basically need the equivalent of a CS degree anyway. The same isn't true with EE/CS.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#94

Post by leowoo91 »

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 might not be the perfect curriculum yet, but not every CS course should be necessary to be good at ML/AI (compared to no need of knowing electrical engineering or physics while studying CS).

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#95

Post by exogeny »

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.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#96

Post by joker3 »

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…

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

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#97

Post by exogeny »

aroman wrote: post #90
joshuamorton wrote: post #69

This looks good (which shouldn't be surprising coming from CMU). I'm kind of impressed by how similar this was to my undergrad curriculum (focusing on AI/ML and CS theory). Looks like a fun program. Also wow, Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science[1] is a hell of a course. Induction, DFAs, matchings, TMs, complexity, NP, approximation and randomization, Transducers, crypto, and quantum algos. That's a lot of mat…

yeah, it's rather notorious at CMU for being particularly challenging and fast-paced, especially for a freshman course. sometimes called "two-fifty-fun"!

I'm getting a panic attack just reminiscing about it.

213 and 251, the twin terrors.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#98

Post by [deleted] »

majormajor wrote: post #21

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 - a…

[deleted]

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#99

Post by 3pt14159 »

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.

Re: Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence

#100

Post by jcdavis »

joshuamorton wrote: post #69

This looks good (which shouldn't be surprising coming from CMU). I'm kind of impressed by how similar this was to my undergrad curriculum (focusing on AI/ML and CS theory). Looks like a fun program. Also wow, Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science[1] is a hell of a course. Induction, DFAs, matchings, TMs, complexity, NP, approximation and randomization, Transducers, crypto, and quantum algos. That's a lot of mat…

That course (15-251) is somewhat controversial among CS students (at least it certainly was when I was there) in that its primary goal in the curriculum seemed to be to act as the weedout course, since as you observed it covers a ton of material in little depth. It is typically taken 2nd semester freshman year, and I know at least 3 people my year who dropped out of CS from it :(
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