New AI majors in The Diamondback

Philosophy shaping how AI is used.

Recently The Diamondback ran a story on the two new majors in AI. One is a BA in ARHU, directed by our own Eric Pacuit and supported by the Department of Philosophy, starting immediately in Fall 2026. The other is a BS in CMNS, to begin one year later. "We need to train students to not only be comfortable using AI, but to be able to shape how it’s used,” Eric is quoted as saying, "[and t]o do that, we need students with not just technical understanding, but really to be able to engage with the humanities.” Featuring seven specializations – arts; design and user experience; ethics; language and cognition; law; logic, epistemology and machine learning; policy and governance; and society, culture and technology – the major aims to make concepts and tools from AI, including programming and machine learning, accessible to students from a wide range of backgrounds, "while emphasizing ethical, social and human perspectives." Important to this will be several members of our faculty, including Ilaria Canavotto, one the few members of the growing Core Faculty at AIM, the Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (the Kleene Star is slient), as well Eric, Jeff and Fabrizio, our Affiliate Faculty at AIM, all of whom were central in developing the new major.