The University of Texas at Austin, one of the nation’s leading computer science schools, said Thursday it was starting a large-scale, low-cost online master of science program in artificial intelligence.
The new program, the first of its kind among elite computer schools, could help rapidly expand the AI workforce in the United States as tech giants like Microsoft rush to invest billions in the field.
The university announced the initiative amid an outcry over new technology powered by artificial intelligence that can generate human-like art and text. And while some of the biggest companies in the tech industry are laying off workers after years of rapid growth, AI hiring is expected to remain strong.
University officials said they planned to train thousands of graduating students in sought-after skills like machine learning, for a tuition of about $10,000, starting in spring 2024. School officials said the cost was aimed at making make AI education more affordable. By contrast, Johns Hopkins University offers an online master’s degree in artificial intelligence for more than $45,000.
“AI is now becoming an essential tool in fields that are beyond the reach of a handful of tech companies,” said Adam Klivans, a professor of computer science at Texas and director of the online AI master’s program. Noting that AI experts are in high demand in industries such as biotech and finance, Professor Klivans said the new online degree was “something that working professionals can engage in to learn the expertise their employees need.” companies without leaving their jobs.
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Funding to develop the new master’s program came in part from the National Science Foundation. In 2020, the foundation awarded the University of Texas a $20 million grant for five years establish an AI institute in machine learning. That’s a field where computer algorithms learn to make predictions by analyzing large data sets, such as predicting which drug formulations might best be used to treat new viruses.
University officials said tenured professors in computer science and related fields such as computer engineering would deliver the online master’s courses through recorded video lectures, along with some interactive sessions. Faculty members involved in an interdisciplinary research program at the university called good systemswhose goal is to develop AI tools whose potential social benefits outweigh their harms, will also participate.
The online master’s program will include advanced courses in fields such as machine learning; AI applications in health; and natural language processing, which helps voice assistants like Siri and Alexa understand human speech. Each course will also include formal ethics training to provide students with a framework for understanding the social implications of AI systems.
“In each of the classes, the instructor will ask students to reflect on the potential benefits and potential harms of the technologies they are learning,” said Peter Stone, a computer science professor in Texas who teaches an ethical robotics course. “The people who develop the next generation of technologies, as well as the users, must have a realistic vision of what are the strengths and limitations of AI”
Those creative and critical skills could be in increasing demand. Tech companies are scrambling to develop advanced chatbots and other artificial intelligence tools that can generate images and text in response to brief prompts, even as some researchers warn that the rush to implement these novel systems could pose risks such as political manipulation.
The Texas program was inspired in part by the Georgia Institute of Technology, which in 2014 became the first leading computer science school to start a large-scale, low-cost online master’s degree in that field Thousands of students have graduated from the program.
In 2019, The University of Texas at Austin launched its own full-scale online master’s program in computer science, followed by a similar online master’s degree in data science in 2021. Together, the programs have an enrollment of approximately 2,800 students.
The university plans to open applications for the new master’s program in AI this June with the goal of enrolling more than 2,000 students a year, said Don Fussell, chair of the computer science department. To be accepted into the online program, he said, students will not be required to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, but will need to have experience in a technical field such as engineering or computing.
With widespread layoffs at Amazon, Google and other tech companies, the online show may already have a prime audience: tens of thousands of unemployed tech workers looking to specialize in artificial intelligence.
“If these redundancies continue, I think we are going to see a shift among many people from general computing and technology to AI,” Professor Fussell said. “This is how the field moves.”
