Carnegie Mellon is set to offer the first undergrad AI degree in the US

The major will be run out of the computer science department and have an emphasis on ethics.

Details: Students will study the ethical and societal implications of AI with professors from other departments, like social sciences and public policy. They will also have opportunities for independent study in using AI for social good (like improving transportation, health care, or education). Other courses will cover areas like statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation.

Pipeline: There are a lot more companies looking for AI talent than there are experts to help them. An undergraduate degree might not be enough to build the most cutting-edge AI systems, but plenty of firms need employees who know their way around machine-learning algorithms.

Why it matters: You can’t be a computer scientist these days and not have some degree of AI in your skill set. And CMU’s focus on ethics will help train the next generation of developers to make sure more systems are built with people in mind.