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I'm curious to hear about your experience. In my mind, artificial intelligence can't be separated from computer science. In fact, I feel like you need a full Co

I'm curious to hear about your experience. In my mind, artificial intelligence can't be separated from computer science. In fact, I feel like you need a full Comp Sci degree before you can effectively apply your skills to real world AI challenges.

_asummers 8y ago
CMU seems to agree with that. Upthread bertjk posted: "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation."
dwcnnnghm 8y ago
I am currently studying this degree at the same university. A few AI concepts (NLP and Formal Language Processing) are introduced in the 2nd year. Other than that, all courses are CS/Maths. Keep in mind that at Scottish Universities, students apply directly to their degree and besides one or two courses per year (some like Medicine or Law often have no electives), students take only courses within their degree. This way, with most AI courses in 3rd and 4th year, students tend to have a strong enough grounding in CS principles and Maths for this material. That's not to say that the degree is perfect, or providing "real/production" AI, but it is certainly well done. You can see the courses here - http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/18-19/dpt/utaintl.htm http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/18-19/dpt/utaintl.htm
- harveynick 8y ago
  Oh cool, what year are you in? If it's 3rd or 4th I was one of the judges at your systems design practical.
harveynick 8y ago
It's a little more complicated than I made it sound above. 50% of my curriculum was courses from CS department, the other 50% courses from the AI department. It was actually possible to do AI without doing CS at all, though. There were AI and Linguistics, and AI and Phycology degrees, for example. There was basically no crossover in languages used in the courses taught by the two departments. CS was mostly Java with some C++ and C. AI was Matlab, Prolog, a little bit of Python for NLP, and few other esoteric things. Some AI-side courses involved basically no programming at all ("Introduction to Cognitive Science" springs to mind). That said: some of the AI students who didn't have to take any CS courses chose not to take the suggested ones... then had a really hard time in a few of the later courses. Computer Vision was brutal for them. The situation is slightly different now. Edinburgh has a foundational "Informatics" (being the combination of CS, AI and Cognitive Science) curriculum. Students in those disciplines start with that, and then fully specialize in the later years of the course. As a more or less completely unrelated side note: Sethu Vijayakumar, one of the judges for the last couple of seasons of Robot Wars UK, was my dissertation examiner.
- throwaway2345k 8y ago
  Don't they teach Haskell to students as their first language now? Sethu had an incredibly high dropout rate among his PhD students. I've heard stories about him publicly berating them at lab meetings - calling them stupid etc. Smart guy, but I'd never want to work with him.
majc2 8y ago
Back in the 2000s - it was AI & CS (or SE) Joint Honours. In 1st and 2nd year, you would do the same Maths and CS course as CS/SE; you didn't get an elective it was a separate AI course, which covered the basics. In 3rd/4th year (honours years as they're called here) - IIRC you'd have to take 8 courses in 3rd (plus an individual project and a team project) and 6 in 4th and your dissertation. Depending on the degree specialisation; you had to take some mandatory courses (CS only had to do Compiling Techniques and Algorithms, AI/CS didn't have to do CT - but they had to do Algorithms and Computability and Intractability). So, the two departments were very closely aligned and then were brought together into a new department/school within the Science and Engineering faculty. They also offer a single AI honours degree now, but the structure seems very similar to what I experienced, with perhaps a bit more freedom in 3rd and 4th year. Interestingly, while the majority of students were AI/CS or AI/SE - they also had joint honour programmes outside the faculty - so there were a few students who were AI and Psychology as well as AI and Linguistics. I don't believe they offer this combination anymore.

_asummers 8y ago

CMU seems to agree with that. Upthread bertjk posted: "AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation."

dwcnnnghm 8y ago

I am currently studying this degree at the same university. A few AI concepts (NLP and Formal Language Processing) are introduced in the 2nd year. Other than that, all courses are CS/Maths. Keep in mind that at Scottish Universities, students apply directly to their degree and besides one or two courses per year (some like Medicine or Law often have no electives), students take only courses within their degree. This way, with most AI courses in 3rd and 4th year, students tend to have a strong enough grounding in CS principles and Maths for this material. That's not to say that the degree is perfect, or providing "real/production" AI, but it is certainly well done. You can see the courses here - http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/18-19/dpt/utaintl.htm http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/18-19/dpt/utaintl.htm

harveynick 8y ago
Oh cool, what year are you in? If it's 3rd or 4th I was one of the judges at your systems design practical.

harveynick 8y ago

It's a little more complicated than I made it sound above. 50% of my curriculum was courses from CS department, the other 50% courses from the AI department. It was actually possible to do AI without doing CS at all, though. There were AI and Linguistics, and AI and Phycology degrees, for example. There was basically no crossover in languages used in the courses taught by the two departments. CS was mostly Java with some C++ and C. AI was Matlab, Prolog, a little bit of Python for NLP, and few other esoteric things. Some AI-side courses involved basically no programming at all ("Introduction to Cognitive Science" springs to mind). That said: some of the AI students who didn't have to take any CS courses chose not to take the suggested ones... then had a really hard time in a few of the later courses. Computer Vision was brutal for them. The situation is slightly different now. Edinburgh has a foundational "Informatics" (being the combination of CS, AI and Cognitive Science) curriculum. Students in those disciplines start with that, and then fully specialize in the later years of the course. As a more or less completely unrelated side note: Sethu Vijayakumar, one of the judges for the last couple of seasons of Robot Wars UK, was my dissertation examiner.

throwaway2345k 8y ago
Don't they teach Haskell to students as their first language now? Sethu had an incredibly high dropout rate among his PhD students. I've heard stories about him publicly berating them at lab meetings - calling them stupid etc. Smart guy, but I'd never want to work with him.

majc2 8y ago

Back in the 2000s - it was AI & CS (or SE) Joint Honours. In 1st and 2nd year, you would do the same Maths and CS course as CS/SE; you didn't get an elective it was a separate AI course, which covered the basics. In 3rd/4th year (honours years as they're called here) - IIRC you'd have to take 8 courses in 3rd (plus an individual project and a team project) and 6 in 4th and your dissertation. Depending on the degree specialisation; you had to take some mandatory courses (CS only had to do Compiling Techniques and Algorithms, AI/CS didn't have to do CT - but they had to do Algorithms and Computability and Intractability). So, the two departments were very closely aligned and then were brought together into a new department/school within the Science and Engineering faculty. They also offer a single AI honours degree now, but the structure seems very similar to what I experienced, with perhaps a bit more freedom in 3rd and 4th year. Interestingly, while the majority of students were AI/CS or AI/SE - they also had joint honour programmes outside the faculty - so there were a few students who were AI and Psychology as well as AI and Linguistics. I don't believe they offer this combination anymore.