You Could Get a College Degree in AI. Is It Worth It?
By Movieguide® Contributor
Colleges and universities are starting to offer degrees in AI as the technology becomes more and more prevalent in industries all over the world.
“Specialists in artificial intelligence have never been more important, in shorter supply or in greater demand by employers,” Andrew Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, said of their program, which was launched in 2018.
The University of Southern California has also established an AI program, with USC professor Yolanda Gil calling it “pioneering and forward-thinking.”
“With this program, we will empower business and organizational leaders to understand the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of AI technologies and to help them better understand the people they serve, predict trends and improve decision-making processes,” Gil continued.
Emma Twitmeyer, a rising junior at Penn, is one of many students who are pursuing a degree in AI. She changed her major and says there are “plenty” of others who are planning to do the same thing.
“In the world that we live in today, a technical degree is always an asset, and this degree will absolutely be technical in nature,” she explained.
While there is a massive demand for workers who understand AI technology, others warn against earning a too-specialized degree.
Maria Flynn, president and chief executive of Jobs for the Future, an organization that promotes worker opportunity and education, told CNBC, “As we see in product marketing, anyone can slap ‘AI’ onto an existing product. Students should ask what aspects of AI they will be learning.”
She added that students considering a degree in AI should think about what kind of education they want — “relevant skills and knowledge that will get them into the labor market right now or…a broader degree that will be a foundation for longer-term advancement.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the growing popularity of AI:
Media analysts predict artificial intelligence spending will surpass $13 billion by 2028.
“However, the analysts do not anticipate the content creation apocalypse that has underscored much AI coverage of late,” Variety reported. “Leading off a daylong series of panels that confronted those two troubling vowels on everyone’s mind from a panoply of industry perspectives, research directors from Omdia and Plum Research instead sought to give context – to assuage fears and misconception by framing machine learning more as a tool than as a weapon.”
“AI will not replace humans,” said Omdia’s Maria Rua Aguete. “But humans that know how to use AI will replace those who don’t, because they will be more efficient, more creative, and [better] prepared.”
Plum Research’s Jonathan Broughton says that AI will be a good solution for “talent shortages,” and businesses can use it to their advantage.
“…The main challenge right now is on the management side,” he said. “It’s up to business leaders to understand how to deploy this within their organizations and to create processes within existing workflows.”
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