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Would you consider an undergraduate degree in Physics the same as a graduate degree in physics? No, I would not expect a person with an undergrad degree in phy

Would you consider an undergraduate degree in Physics the same as a graduate degree in physics? No, I would not expect a person with an undergrad degree in physics to have nearly the same capabilities and understanding of a PhD holder in general. Similarly, it would be silly to assume the alums from this program are going to be considered to be of the same caliber. Instead, they will fill roles in which having a richer math, cs, and stats background matters a bit less, as is the case for a large fraction of data scientist jobs. And yes, they would be remotely useful with just 4 decent cs classes, 2 stats classes, and 2 math classes.

matthewbauer 8y ago
Isn’t most AI work in research though? I think the problem most are having with this is we generally consider AI to be more prestigious than something like data science (which seems like it would be a better name for a degree in its own right).
- asafira 8y ago
  I think I agree with you that the degree might be more aptly named "data science", but that's a relatively minor detail in the scheme of things. I don't think I would claim most AI work is research, but regardless, I think there is a still quite a lot of work that is quite applied nowadays. For example, there are a huge number of special-use-case neural networks you can think of to make very specific decisions based on image data. Or, nearly every online retailer would love someone to be able to come up with a good recommendation engine for products on their site. While a PhD might build a slightly-better one, I'm fairly confident that an undergrad trained properly (no pun intended) could pull off something usable.
- bkanber 8y ago
  AI is a broad field. Much of it is applied these days. Even setting a very high bar for what constitutes "AI", I would concede that Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are AI systems. How many jobs are there supporting those products today? How many will there be 5 years from now when these kids graduate? But there are many other AI products out there, and moreso, machine learning is now widespread as a supporting tool in very many places. The data science field of today/tomorrow is ML and AI, and we definitely will need more practitioners.

matthewbauer 8y ago

Isn’t most AI work in research though? I think the problem most are having with this is we generally consider AI to be more prestigious than something like data science (which seems like it would be a better name for a degree in its own right).

asafira 8y ago
I think I agree with you that the degree might be more aptly named "data science", but that's a relatively minor detail in the scheme of things. I don't think I would claim most AI work is research, but regardless, I think there is a still quite a lot of work that is quite applied nowadays. For example, there are a huge number of special-use-case neural networks you can think of to make very specific decisions based on image data. Or, nearly every online retailer would love someone to be able to come up with a good recommendation engine for products on their site. While a PhD might build a slightly-better one, I'm fairly confident that an undergrad trained properly (no pun intended) could pull off something usable.
bkanber 8y ago
AI is a broad field. Much of it is applied these days. Even setting a very high bar for what constitutes "AI", I would concede that Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are AI systems. How many jobs are there supporting those products today? How many will there be 5 years from now when these kids graduate? But there are many other AI products out there, and moreso, machine learning is now widespread as a supporting tool in very many places. The data science field of today/tomorrow is ML and AI, and we definitely will need more practitioners.