As a CMU professor, in case it wasn't clear: We, in general, felt fairly strongly that we did not want to radically alter the meaning of a CMU CS degree, i.e., that our B.S. in C.S. students do come out with the degree having hit some depth in systems, in PL, in algo and theory.
We also felt fairly strongly that supporting students who wanted something different from their education, which still falls under the broad CS umbrella but is different in some important ways -- was important.
These things are surprisingly hard to juggle. Eight semesters, four courses per semester, juggling cross-university requirements, some amount of personal electives and fun, and an intensive set of major courses, doesn't actually leave much wiggle room, especially when you include the prerequisite dependency graph of those courses.
Hence, it's a different major, because it reflects a quite different set of skills that {employers, grad schools, whatever} can count on the graduate knowing.
(There's also value in providing a roadmap for sequencing these things, again because of the prerequisite chains, but I concur that that alone isn't a reason for a major.)
And yes, of course it's all a continuum. We call AI a separate major, alongside things like HCI and computational biology. We don't have an "operating systems" major. If you like systems a lot, you still have to take all the normal algo/PL/etc. breadth requirements.
It's all a judgement call. The feeling here is that AI/ML are starting to contain a sufficiently different set of core skills that it was worth breaking them out into their own major instead of just saying "eh, go take some electives, and try to fit in all of your interests while _still_ taking all the other CS classes." Because that's what we used to suggest, and the students rightly pointed out that it wasn't possible to do it right within the existing degree framework, at least, if you wanted to sleep.
>we did not want to radically alter the meaning of a CMU CS degree
That's just it. No radical alteration was required. You're already saying that: "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students." But if CMU had added a new concentration or specialization to the existing major this story wouldn't be on the front page of HN.
There is no way that at some point in the discussion "This will be a big publicity win for us" wasn't brought up by someone.
In general I think it's bad advice for undergrads to pursue hyper specialized degrees. I think it's a bad idea when engineering schools do it with things like robotics engineering, and I think it's a bad idea when CS departments do it with AI. Specialization is what grad school is for--this isn't the UK. I also think that schools that offer these degrees are doing a disservice to their students.
We also felt fairly strongly that supporting students who wanted something different from their education, which still falls under the broad CS umbrella but is different in some important ways -- was important.
These things are surprisingly hard to juggle. Eight semesters, four courses per semester, juggling cross-university requirements, some amount of personal electives and fun, and an intensive set of major courses, doesn't actually leave much wiggle room, especially when you include the prerequisite dependency graph of those courses.
Hence, it's a different major, because it reflects a quite different set of skills that {employers, grad schools, whatever} can count on the graduate knowing.
(There's also value in providing a roadmap for sequencing these things, again because of the prerequisite chains, but I concur that that alone isn't a reason for a major.)
And yes, of course it's all a continuum. We call AI a separate major, alongside things like HCI and computational biology. We don't have an "operating systems" major. If you like systems a lot, you still have to take all the normal algo/PL/etc. breadth requirements.
It's all a judgement call. The feeling here is that AI/ML are starting to contain a sufficiently different set of core skills that it was worth breaking them out into their own major instead of just saying "eh, go take some electives, and try to fit in all of your interests while _still_ taking all the other CS classes." Because that's what we used to suggest, and the students rightly pointed out that it wasn't possible to do it right within the existing degree framework, at least, if you wanted to sleep.