Carnegie Mellon To Offer Nation's First Artificial Intelligence Major
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PITTSBURGH (AP/KDKA) - Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh will offer the nation's first undergraduate degree program in artificial intelligence.
Officials with the school announced Thursday the new major will be available to students enrolled in the School of Computer Science starting in the fall.
Many American universities offer an artificial intelligence track within degree programs like Computer Science and Computer Engineering.
But Carnegie Mellon is the first school to offer a distinct undergraduate major in artificial intelligence.
"This is kind of a revolutionary thing," CMU Professor Tuomas Sandholm said. "We have a very large AI research and education program at CMU, and we really want to package it in a way that can satisfy all of this new demand that is coming from students and from tech companies, start-ups, the government and so on to really educate a new population of top tier AI people."
The university was a pioneer in artificial intelligence research, writing some of the first AI programs in the 1950s, and has remained among the top schools to study the field.
Sandholm says the demand for AI through computers is growing, guaranteeing jobs after graduation, and most graduates of CMU in artificial intelligence will make six figures right after graduation.
Only those admitted to CMU's extremely selective computer science program can take the artificial intelligence major. Of the 6,500 students who applied, only 200 were admitted this year.
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