In a recent study by tech retailer Currys, the University of Edinburgh was ranked second in Artificial Intelligence class enrollment.
The study comes in the context of AI beginning to have weight on the future career paths of many students. With this the study finds a 453 per cent increase between 2023/2024 and 2017/2018 within the United Kingdom.
In this rise, women have seen a large exponential growth, going from 365 enrollments in 2017/2018 to 2,265 enrollments in 2023/2024. Although the growth is substantial for women, it still significantly lags behind males, who by 2023/2024 had reached a total of 5,670 enrollments in AI courses.
The University of Edinburgh currently offers a degree in Artificial Intelligence for undergraduate and master’s students. The course description for the undergraduate degree hopes to teach students how AI can help mimic intelligence and then use AI “for building systems capable of intelligent decisions and actions”.
One Engineering second year student said she felt AI in its current state has little effect on her job opportunities as “chat GPT can’t even solve my math problems”.
She did, however, see the potential of AI, saying, “There are companies out there like BlackRock using AI to predict market risks and opportunities,” which proves through “the company’s growth (…) how powerful AI can be”.
When it came to taking courses on AI at Edinburgh, another student taking Chemistry said she felt that she was “not really sure how willingly [she would] take the course”.
This was primarily because of how she thought the functions of AI, specifically “language learning models,” were already taught within her course.
“I don’t think I’d need separate courses to learn how to use those models”.
“Artificial Intelligence & AI & Machine Learning” by mikemacmarketing is licensed under CC BY 2.0.