Ivy league school University of Pennsylvania is set to launch the first artificial intelligence (AI) degree for a school of its stature this year, as announced by the school's Engineering and Applied Science Department. Officially called a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Artificial Intelligence, the degree comes amidst the rise of AI in almost every aspect of society.
The degree is one of the first AI undergraduate engineering programs in the United States and the first undergraduate major of its kind among Ivy League universities. Behind the program's funding are tech visionaries and philanthropists Rajendra and Neera Singh.
As per the Undergraduate Dean of Penn Engineering, Robert Ghrist, most of the new AI degree courses are reportedly preexisting as they have already been gradually integrating AI into several of their course offerings.
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This illustration picture shows the AI (artificial intelligence) smartphone app ChatGPT surrounded by other AI apps in Vaasa on June 6, 2023.
The AI degree offers practical programming, AI tools, and foundation model usage knowledge in addition to the mathematical and computational underpinnings of AI techniques.
Students taking the degree will study intelligence from a cognitive science perspective to broaden their engineering abilities and help them understand the problems and solutions involved in developing AI responsibly for societal good. Lastly, the students select a concentration from robots, AI and health systems, data and society, vision and language, and machine learning.
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UPenn's New AI Building
The courses in the new program will be taught at Penn Engineering's newest building, Amy Gutmann Hall, by esteemed faculty members from around the globe. The cutting-edge facilities in Amy Gutmann Hall, which officially opens this year, will reportedly serve as a hub for data science both on campus and for the Philadelphia community.
The program reportedly aims to give the students the tools they need to see AI's potential for good in society. The degree is expected to enable students to create responsible AI tools that can access the entirety of the knowledge on the internet, exhibit superhuman attention to detail, and support humans in making groundbreaking scientific discoveries.
The degree also assists students in exploring potential materials for future chips, advancing medical research by discovering novel antibiotics, implementing life-saving therapies, and accelerating knowledge and creativity.
Future-Proof AI Degree
Ghrist then lauded the program, saying that by the time the students graduate, the degree will have prepared them for employment that may only exist in fields that have just begun.
The Dean further adds that it is one of the most exciting educational opportunities he has ever seen in his decades of teaching and that he is looking forward to working with the students on the new degree.
When Fox News asked about the prevalent uneasiness about using robots in society and the fear that technology would replace jobs, Ghrist believed it was vital to recall how far humanity had come. Ghrist compares AI to the internet in that despite there being internet scams within the web, its potential remains of value; he claims that "AI has that same potential."
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