CS degrees will remain valuable, students should learn code: Hinton

AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has said computer science degrees will remain valuable even as artificial intelligence systems increasingly take over parts of programming work. 

The “Godfather of AI” argued that it is a mistake to assume advances in AI make studying computer science pointless.

Hinton said many people wrongly think a computer science degree is “just programming”. In reality, he added, the discipline teaches systems thinking, mathematics, algorithmic problem-solving and logical reasoning. 

While he believes that “being a competent mid-level programmer is not going to be a career for much longer” as AI improves, he said a CS degree “will be valuable for quite a long time” because of these greater skills.

His view aligns with that of other prominent figures in technology, who say it is too early to declare computer science a casualty of the AI boom, even as agentic AI reshapes the job market. 

OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, who holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science, has described CS degrees as “extremely valuable”, saying there is “a lot more to coding than writing the code” and that computer science is a powerful way to learn systems thinking.

Others argue that CS education should evolve rather than be abandoned. Sameer Samat, Google’s head of Android, has said computer science needs to be reframed as the science of solving problems. 

UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid has also suggested that the most exciting roles for CS graduates are now found outside the traditional big tech firms, at the intersection of computing and fields such as drug discovery, medical imaging, neuroscience, finance, digital humanities and public policy.

Hinton also urged middle and high school students to learn coding, even if AI systems become capable of doing much of the actual programming. He likened coding to learning Latin in a humanities curriculum: people may never use the language in daily life, but the intellectual training still strengthens the mind. In the same way, he said, learning to code sharpens thinking and improves the ability to analyse problems.

Overall, Hinton’s advice to students who hope to become advanced AI researchers or engineers is to invest in durable, foundational skills rather than any single task that AI may soon automate. 

Knowledge of mathematics, statistics, probability theory and linear algebra, he said, “will always be valuable” and is “not knowledge that’s going to disappear.”

Source: Business Insider