SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. — John Brown University (JBU) has announced a new undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence (AI), set to begin in the fall of 2024.
While talk about AI has become common since the rise of programs like ChatGPT, AI has been used by people daily for decades.
JBU officials said AI "impacts everyday life from real-time traffic monitoring in navigation apps to smart-home devices, search engine algorithms, banking fraud alerts, and spell-check software."
“AI has enormous potential to improve health care, make education more accessible, improve economic health, increase online child safety, and much more,” Ted Song, JBU’s chief innovation officer, said.
A Bloomberg Intelligence report predicts the AI market will grow to around $1.3 trillion by 2032, and only about a dozen universities in the U.S. offer a full bachelor’s degree in artificial intelligence, according to JBU.
The university will be the first Christian institution in the U.S. to offer this program. JBU already offers similar programs like computer science, cybersecurity, and game design. Since fall 2023, they've offered AI as a minor but university officials say the new degree plan will set students up for success post-graduation.
"So for the first two years, their freshman and sophomore year, students would start with learning programming languages, Python, Java, C sharp, and the technologies. And all of them would be general computer science problem solving, and also a little bit of AI thing like in Python," Justus Selwyn, professor and computer science department, said. "Then from their junior and senior year, they will start working on AI-specific courses, like machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, computer vision."
Selwyn believes AI will be around to stay, so a curriculum in our area would be beneficial.
"What I see into the future three, or four years from now, is we cannot get rid of AI from any of our businesses or in any of our industries, so it will be critical for graduate students who want to do computer science as a career to have hands-on experience in AI," Selwyn said.
For more information about the program, prospective students can visit JBU's website.
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