I agree. Many of the statistical concepts can be extended from advanced undergraduate stats too. I can see how the high salaries paid in these jobs would lead to some serious gatekeeping though.
My concern is that these courses will likely be taught without any deference to the ethics involved in the work done, and I think that will play an increasingly important role in years to come.
Most undergrad engineering worth its salt will require an ethics course and humanities classes broaching the topic.
The main issue is that a lot of people do not take away the intent, or can fully answer questions correctly about the intent but not actually care. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Ha I actually think the complete opposite will be true - Here in New Zealand I got a degree in neuroscience without doing any papers outside of core science, whereas in the US I would probably have to do humanities based courses etc (which I think is a fairly good thing) - and it's not unlikely that these will come to include topics in ethics.
Also ethical review boards for other areas of science are very well established, and it's not unrealistic to imagine that extending towards machine learning as well.
