Universities are experiencing a surge in interest in artificial intelligence courses and programs. Non-STEM students, in particular, are increasingly drawn to AI education, prompting universities to adapt their curricula to meet the evolving demands of the field.
At Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the undergraduate major in Artificial Intelligence has undergone significant changes since its inception over half a decade ago. According to Reid Simmons, the program director for the Bachelor of Science in AI at CMU, generative AI and large language models have become central to the field. “That’s what we’re focused on mostly, right now — really trying to make sure the students understand the technology,” Simmons stated. CMU was one of the first universities to offer an undergraduate degree in AI, launching its program in 2018. Originally, the goal was to provide students with a broad understanding of the rapidly changing field which included areas such as search, knowledge representation, decision making, robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing. Now, the number of machine learning classes has expanded dramatically.
The growing power and applications of AI are fueling a demand for AI education. Simmons notes an uptick in interest from students without traditional engineering or computer science backgrounds. “We’re starting to look at courses that are more accessible to people without a strong technical background,” he said. “So that’s kind of the next step that we’re looking at, is how to kind of have an AI for all type experience.”
A similar trend is unfolding at Johns Hopkins University, according to Barton Paulhamus, the director of the online master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence. The program is attracting a “broader audience” as awareness of AI grows. “What can we give them that they can learn about AI without needing to go through 10 courses of prerequisites?” Paulhamus questioned. The university is adapting its courses, which were once geared toward computer science undergraduates, to cater to students from diverse fields, including nursing, business, and education. Additionally, Johns Hopkins is expanding its offerings in generative AI to meet the surging demand.
Even with the excitement surrounding the “AI boom,” Paulhamus emphasized the importance of focusing on core educational elements. “It’s more fundamental than the latest du jour thing, right?” Paulhamus noted.
Leonidas Bachas, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami (UM), underscores the need for accessible introductory courses to demystify AI for non-STEM students. According to Bachas, UM offers an introductory course that requires no prior computing background, providing students with an early exposure to data science and AI. “We have a course that starts with data science and AI for everyone…they may not even know coding, but they get this teaser as a starter course through which they can become interested in the subject matter and then continue into one of these other programs,” Bachas explained. The aim is to make the field less intimidating and more inclusive.
Mitsunori Ogihara, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at UM, hopes that students will come to view data science and AI as fundamental subjects, akin to mathematics. A deeper understanding can alleviate anxieties about the potential implications of AI. “Whenever there is this new development that occurs, lay-people’s reaction is, ‘Oh, I’m totally scared of this. The computer scientists are conspiring to do very, very bad things to society,’” Ogihara stated. “We want to remove that. So, the best way to do this is to educate the next generation, the people who are running the society, about how computing works, how computing could be useful.”
