Des Moines, Iowa (RI) — A recent study found artificial intelligence appears to be a greater threat to entry-level jobs for software developers and computer programmers, and a Drake University computer science professor says it appears professional experience makes someone more resilient as AI influences business decisions. Chris Porter is the director of Drake’s Artificial Intelligence program.
Drake’s AI major has been offered since the fall of 2020, and Porter says it’s been designed to give students the right experience — and he warns them to not rely solely on Chat GPT and other forms of artificial intelligence to solve problems.
He says students who major in AI at Drake — maybe half their curriculum is technical and the other half is philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, design, law… So he says he tells them the digital ethics course is just as important as the machine learning course because you can automate machine learning, but being able to solve ethical problems. Your employer’s going to rely on you to have that know-how and have that ethical outlook and be able to lay out the issues, and that’s not something that you can easily automate at all. And, he says, why would we?
Chris Snider, who teaches digital media classes at Drake, says one of their priorities is helping students land internships and have classroom experiences that are like an entry-level job — so when students graduate, they’re applying for that next step up the job ladder.
Snider and Porter made their comments during a recent appearance on Iowa Press on Iowa PBS.
