AI's curse is that once it becomes mundane people call it "automation".
I think that having a focused degree in AI makes sense. I think that AI has reached the level of maturity that a separate curriculum should be made for it.
Just as we had no distinction between computer scientists and software engineers we now face a world where AI and or Data Science require a different focus on education.
My only thought on that idea is that it feels like an undergrad in AI is less useful in the sense that most AI positions prefer PHD over masters, let alone undergrad.
On the other hand, I've got a friend with a film degree pulling in decent money in Houston as a solo consultant (hiring contractors as needed (like me)), going from oldschool oil EPC to oldschool healthcare data analysis firms pitching "Big Data analysis" and "AI trained data modeling."
Mostly it's plugging .CSVs into google's cloud platform tools, but sometimes I get to peek at some homebrew R or python modeling stuff.
He (nor any of us that he pulls in for big projects) will never do research for MIT or OpenAI, but money is already being made in "AI." If his business ever explodes into a full blown company, these undergrads are exactly the kind of people he'd hire.
Training an analysis model and then using it for further analysis is automation? Well then so is telling a programmer "find ways to add value to this company." Boom. Automation.
Mate no offense but I find semantics arguments super boring. The kind of work my friend does is exactly the sort of stuff they teach in AI courses. You wanna call it "bananabananafruitypoopoo" that's fine by me, "automation," sure, whatever.
I think that having a focused degree in AI makes sense. I think that AI has reached the level of maturity that a separate curriculum should be made for it.
Just as we had no distinction between computer scientists and software engineers we now face a world where AI and or Data Science require a different focus on education.