Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston launches new major for AI: "The buzz is enormous"
Top Tech CEOs now agree with warnings that AI is moving too fast for humans and that Washington needs to get involved. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X overnight, "We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI. But we do not believe we need to wait for an anti-trust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence."
Some of the people who will help steer AI into the future are being trained here in Massachusetts. At Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, students are getting AI ready. This semester the university launched a new major for AI.
The school is offering AI courses in computing, life sciences, construction management, architecture, and cybersecurity. "The buzz is enormous. Everybody is talking about it. We built this degree so that you are really savvy in the particular field you are interested in but also very knowledgeable in the AI space as well and an interesting blend of a program," Dean of the School of Computing and Data Science, Mike Farmer said.
Professor Mehmet Ergezer, who helped co-create the AI program at Wentworth, says one of the required courses for every student is "Responsible Application of Generative AI."
"We have also AI ethics course that we expect students to take," Ergezer said. "How to assess the outputs of these tools, that's going to be a more and more important skill."
Wentworth junior Guru Niker is AI career-focused. He's already taken two AI classes here at the school and is thrilled Wentworth is now offering it as a major. "It's a great major and promising major and something a lot of people are incorporating in their career," Niker said.
Right now, there is currently no agreement among lawmakers on how to regulate AI. In a broadcast exclusive with CBS News, Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei warned that things need to slow down and called for outside involvement.
"Embedded external evaluation, from a third-party nonprofit, or perhaps some big government organization that can observe the process of us training and running our models," Amodei said.
Students like Guru Niker, who are aware of some of the concerns surrounding AI, believe now is the time to embrace it before they fall behind. "I think most students need to get caught up with it," he said. "It's a very fast and growing line and if we are not ahead of it, trying to understand it, it's going to be very difficult."
