A Powerful Look at the Future of AI, From An Epicenter at Carnegie Mellon

by  Hope Reese, TechRepublic

Carnegie Mellon has long been one of the best places in the world to get an education in computer science, and within that field there’s now a significant demand for jobs in artificial intelligence. Still, Andrew Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University sees an “incredible shortage” in people trained in the mathematics and statistics and computer science which underlies making systems autonomous—the AI jobs of the future.

In an interview, Andrew Moore cites a shortage of people skilled in the underlying sciences of artificial intelligence (AI), even though demand for such expertise is growing.

Fifty years ago, two of the founders of AI, Alan Newell and Herb Simon, decided to base their operations in Pittsburgh. The school of computer science at CMU has grown from two people back in 1965 to about 280 faculty now. A hundred are working on AI, 100 on machine learning. And plenty are working on understanding speech, exotic things that will become commonplace…understanding human emotions.

“The thing that keeps me up at night is whether we will find enough middle-schoolers and high-schoolers who want to come into this area,” Moore says. He cites advances in computer vision and adaptive robotics as points of innovation at CMU, and he says researchers have set themselves a five-year goal of developing a dexterous robot arm that can easily grasp and manipulate objects to help disabled people.

Moore also says CMU faculty are working on the ethical ramifications of sociable robots, and the pressing need for all stakeholders in autonomous vehicles and other AI systems to consider how they operate when presented with moral dilemmas. He says he feels an urgent need to develop AI systems because of their potential to save lives by reducing unnecessary deaths and suffering from disease, accidents, and other calamities.

Moore is excited by the increasing inclusion of computer science and robotics in educational curricula in the U.S. and elsewhere, but he says addressing the gender gap in AI education and high-tech leadership requires industrial-academic-governmental partnerships. Read the article.