With the rise of artificial intelligence, there has been a growing belief in the tech industry that coding will soon become redundant, given that new AI models are getting better not just at writing code but also at implementing it. However, Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as one of the godfathers of AI, says it might not be the right time to give up on computer science degrees just yet.
“Many people think a CS degree is just programming or something,” Hinton told Business Insider. “Obviously, just being a competent mid level programmer is not going to be a career for much longer, because AI can do that.”
Hinton predicted that a CS degree is valuable for more than just coding, and believes that a CS degree will be valuable for quite a long time.
The Nobel Prize and Turing Award winner drew a parallel between learning coding and how humanities students learn Latin. He said, “I think it’s very useful to learn to code, and even if they end up not having AI do all the coding for them.”
“I think learning to code is maybe a bit like learning Latin if you’re in the humanities or something. You’re never going to speak Latin, but it’s still useful learning Latin,” Hinton added.
“Some skills that are always going to be valuable, like knowing some maths, statistics and probability theory, and things like linear algebra, will always be valuable,” he further noted.
What do other AI leaders think about a computer science degree?
OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor also shared a similar view about computer science degrees in an episode of Lenny’s podcast earlier this year.
Taylor said, “I still think studying computer science is a different answer than learning to code, but I also think it’s extremely valuable to study computer science. That’s because computer science is more than coding.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also spoken about the importance of understanding the fundamentals of software building, even though AI is expected to do much of the work in the future.
He said, “Just getting the real fundamentals of software still matters a lot to me if you’re a software engineer.”
“Having the ability to think computationally is important,” Nadella added.
On the other end of the spectrum is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who famously said early last year that students should not learn to code and should instead focus on areas like biology, education, manufacturing or farming.
“It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program and the programming language is human. Everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle of artificial intelligence,” Huang said last year.
