What are the benefits of majoring in Artificial Intelligence?

The Rise of AI Degrees in Colleges

As artificial intelligence continues to attract attention and investors, colleges and universities are beginning to market undergraduate AI degrees to students, from Arizona State University to the University of Texas at Dallas.

Job Market Challenges

New graduates are entering a challenging tech job market. While computer science degrees were once seen as a golden ticket to high-paying tech jobs, it has become harder to land tech internships or entry-level positions due to increased competition and major cuts across the industry.

Hope for AI Majors

However, AI majors and professors are optimistic that a specialized course of study may help graduates stand out.

NBC News identified 13 major colleges and universities that began offering bachelor’s degrees in AI in the last six years. With some of the first AI majors just graduating, it remains uncertain how these degrees will fare, but early signs suggest the new degree could give young job seekers an edge.

Notable Programs

Carnegie Mellon University was the first in the U.S. to launch a B.S. in Artificial Intelligence in 2018, saying that the major would address the “growing demand for AI specialists.” The University of Pennsylvania will be offering a major in AI starting this fall, while colleges known for their STEM research like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Purdue University also currently grant undergraduate degrees in AI.

Industry Response

“This is a pioneering and forward-looking interdisciplinary program,” said University of Southern California professor Yolanda Gil while announcing her school’s Artificial Intelligence for Business degree. “With this program, we will empower business and organizational leaders to understand the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of AI technologies.”

Student Perspectives

According to Reid Simmons, director of the AI major at Carnegie Mellon, there were initial doubts about how interested employers would be in an undergraduate major in AI. However, he described the reaction as “very positive.”

“Some of the bigger tech firms indicated that they would hire everybody,” Simmons said. “That was six years ago.”

Most of his students went to Big Tech companies, but now students are also working in health care, finance, and robotics. While AI majors are not guaranteed internships or jobs at Big Tech companies like Google or Apple in 2024, many students have found opportunities this summer.

Success Stories

Among them is Mehmet Deniz Birlikci, who graduated with a B.S. in Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon and will join Amazon’s AGI division soon as an engineer. Birlikci initially considered studying computer science but switched to the AI major.

“I was really viewing AI as a new computing paradigm which is a lot more flexible than hard coding rules,” he said.

He interned with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, where he helped train and deploy AI models, crediting the “branding that CMU AI gave” for helping him land the position.

Increasing Popularity

As more students graduate with AI degrees, the programs are becoming increasingly popular. Out of around 250 incoming freshmen to the School of CS, 200 noted in a survey that they were “considering” the AI major. This marks a substantial increase from the 30 to 35 majors when the program was established.

Motivation Beyond Jobs

Still, landing a Big Tech job is not the primary motivation for choosing the major, Birlikci noted. “[Students] are much more interested in getting their hands dirty building things and really leaving an impact than just get[ting] pure jobs,” he said.

Birlikci also mentioned that since only a few colleges in the U.S. offer an AI major, it’s hard to determine whether the success of these students is due to their college’s prestige or the skills learned in the major.

Future Outlook

Emma Twitmyer, a rising junior at Penn, is one of the first students to major in AI. She believes that majoring in AI will allow students to pursue careers in many fields.

Julie Steele, also in the Class of 2026 at MIT, is majoring in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making and is interning at Citadel this summer.

According to Nancy Xu, founder of the AI-powered tech recruiting platform Moonhub, a bachelor’s degree in AI may appeal to employers looking for “great software engineers who have an understanding of AI.”

“Ultimately, we don’t have enough people who work in AI and we need more people,” Xu said.