Did the first batch of "Shuangfei" students who studied artificial intelligence catch the wind?

Text: Wu Yuchen Editor: Chu Ming

Source: People (ID: renwumag1980)

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI tool

With the explosion of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence has become one of the focuses of people's attention recently. Entrepreneurs are scrambling to enter the market, and big companies are also recruiting. It is not surprising to hear that AI talents are offered millions of dollars in annual salary. At the same time, artificial intelligence fever is also spreading in colleges and universities. In 2018, 35 colleges and universities in China took the lead in obtaining qualifications for the construction of artificial intelligence majors, most of which were 985 and 211 colleges with strong strength.

To some extent, it is forward-looking for colleges and universities to offer artificial intelligence majors. But as a new, unknown and profound major, ordinary colleges need to explore, and teachers also need to learn. Young people come with the unknown and move forward with the unknown.

Now, AI can write copywriting, PPT, code, and draw. And where these young people who encounter the "wind" will go in the future, the artificial intelligence major cannot answer for the time being.

Half is fiery, half is confused

After lights out is time for truth.

In Zhang Tian's dormitory, she will habitually chat about her latest troubles. Once, after a chat, everyone did not regret choosing "artificial intelligence major". Four people in the room said without hesitation: "I regret it."

At that time, Zhang Tian was studying in an engineering college in Xi'an until the second semester of her sophomore year. She had no projects, no internships, and lack of ability, so she felt a little flustered. The difficulty of the course is also getting more and more difficult. She began to not understand the data structure she learned recently-comparing several numbers, sorting from small to large, and the order of arrangement that humans can see at a glance must be taught to the computer. But the computer is "very stupid", and it needs to be taught to read two numbers by two numbers. First compare the size of the two numbers, then change the position after the comparison, and then continue to change the position, and finally a series of numbers can be sorted out.

From the year of enrollment in 2020 to this year, the teachers will say once a year that "artificial intelligence is a good job", and this major represents the future direction. "But what kind of career is a good job? What is the specific direction? What position? No teacher will say." Zhang Tian still doesn't know.

The major of artificial intelligence is regarded as one of the most popular majors at present. Every year, colleges and universities will eliminate some outdated and low-employment majors from their departments and majors, and will also add some new majors. In 2018, after 35 colleges and universities obtained the qualifications for the construction of artificial intelligence majors for the first time, the upsurge of colleges and universities to build artificial intelligence majors kicked off.

In just four or five years, the field of artificial intelligence has grown rapidly. Up to now, 498 colleges and universities in China have successfully applied for the major of artificial intelligence. The upsurge is not only spreading in undergraduate colleges, but also in higher vocational colleges, the application of artificial intelligence technology has added 71 new professional points last year.

According to the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan", by 2025, the scale of China's core artificial intelligence industry will exceed 400 billion yuan, and the scale of related industries will exceed 5 trillion yuan. Students majoring in artificial intelligence are naturally regarded as the reserve army for the emerging artificial intelligence industry in the future. With the popularity of ChatGPT this year, the major of artificial intelligence has attracted much attention.

Colleges and universities rush to explore artificial intelligence majors first, but at the same time, many students majoring in artificial intelligence in ordinary colleges and universities are feeling confused.

When she was a sophomore, Li Wanni, who was studying artificial intelligence at a university in Shenyang, submitted her internship resume, but only received an invitation for a written test, and finally did not enter the interview. In the third year of junior high school, the school organized a double election meeting, and most companies recruited artificial intelligence-related positions with a salary of only 4,000-5,000 yuan-this is far from the high salary imagined. Even so, there was no response to the image recognition engineer post that Li Wanni voted for. In an interview, the company asked Li Wanni to be able to "convolve, sharpen and deform" graphics algorithms, but she only learned convolution "superficially" in class. "I followed the teacher step by step, but when I was looking for a job, I found that what the company asked you to do was not the same as what the teacher taught. But where should I learn those things?"

At a 211 university in Beijing that focuses on liberal arts, Wang Xiaofen, who was transferred to a major in artificial intelligence, has been working hard to change her major since her freshman year, even though her family believes that this is the right choice by mistake. She doesn't want to talk about artificial intelligence with others. After the ChatGPT fire this year, relatives in the family approached Wang Xiaofen to talk about the development of AI, and she could only deal with it hastily. In fact, she is still very vague about what "artificial intelligence" is and what it needs to do.

▲The salary level of artificial intelligence-related positions displayed on a recruitment website is far from the high salary Li Wanni imagined.

"Sweepers" Gathering Place

Li Wanni was born in a medical family, her parents are engaged in medical-related work, after the college entrance examination, her first choice is Chinese medicine, and her second choice is pharmacy. At that time, her long-term plan was to become a pharmacist. What to fill in the third choice was insignificant in her eyes at that time. My father saw that the university in Shenyang had newly opened a "artificial intelligence major". In the promotion and recommendation, the school explained that this major will cooperate with Huawei. My father said, "Then fill this in, it looks good."

Although Li Wanni knew nothing about this major, she thought she would not be admitted to the third choice, so she simply filled in this major. When she was admitted, she was sent to the artificial intelligence major by coincidence under the pressure of pharmacy, and she learned artificial intelligence in a daze.

Ke Beilin, a third-year student majoring in artificial intelligence at a business university in Hunan, is also in a similar situation. Her first choice is accounting, international trade and other majors. Because she likes mathematics, she also filled in the mathematics major. That year, her university enrolled 4 classes of artificial intelligence majors, with 40 students in each class, and a total of 160 majors. In the case of insufficient enrollment scale, Ke Beilin, who was transferred, was transferred to the artificial intelligence major after failing to be admitted in all majors. Before school started, the topic of transfer was discussed in the freshman group. Some people said that they were transferred, and soon someone would pick up, "Me too". After school started, Ke Beilin learned that of the four people in the dormitory, three of them were transferred.

Although according to "Baidu Hot Search 2022 College Entrance Examination Big Data", as of last year, artificial intelligence has been the major with the highest increase in popularity for three consecutive years. But three years ago, this newly established major was not popular in most ordinary colleges and universities. At that time, many students and parents knew almost nothing about this new major.

When Wang Xiaofen graduated from high school, she spotted a liberal arts-oriented 211 university in Beijing. She wanted to study media majors. The first few volunteers filled in public relations, Internet and new media, and the artificial intelligence major was the last one. , but she never expected that her score was recorded by artificial intelligence.

She still remembers the sense of loss. When she opened the admission webpage, she was very happy to see that she had entered her favorite university, and then she found that she was assigned to the major of artificial intelligence, and the school she belonged to was the "School of Information and Communication Engineering". She couldn't believe it, because she didn't even know that this liberal arts college had this college and major. When filling out the application form for the college entrance examination, in order not to continue to study physics and mathematics in university, she "struggled" with her parents for a long time, but in the end she still studied engineering by mistake.

After enrolling, among the six people in the dormitory, four students including Wang Xiaofen were transferred to the artificial intelligence major, and one student mistakenly wrote the artificial intelligence major with a lower score because of an operation error.

Zhang Tian is one of the few who puts the major of artificial intelligence in the first or second choice. Her first choice was computer science, and her second choice was artificial intelligence. In high school, a mathematics teacher who graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University mentioned the major of artificial intelligence, saying, "This thing is relatively new, the development may be better, and the employment is pretty good." At that time, the dividends of big factories were still flowing, and Zhang Tian had no ambitions. She thought that she only needed to graduate and find a job. However, she simply believed that computer and artificial intelligence majors should have a bright future.

Due to various chances and coincidences, high school students who have no knowledge of artificial intelligence have just moved towards a brand new major. It represents the future, but also represents the unknown.

"Changed name to learn computer"

What kind of profession is artificial intelligence? Every student who chooses it has to face this problem personally.

There is no reference answer. For most ordinary college students, this is almost a major without seniors. What classes to take, which textbooks to use, how to find an internship, which company to go to for an internship, whether to choose a postgraduate entrance examination or a job after graduation, these problems are not ready-made, and you have to explore them yourself. They themselves are the most "old" group of students majoring in artificial intelligence.

For the school, how to set up an artificial intelligence major is full of "suspense" starting from the setting of the college and major names. At Hunan Technology and Business University, the major of artificial intelligence was initially set up under the School of Computer Science, in the same compound as majors such as information science and information management. In the second year, the artificial intelligence major was stripped from the School of Computer Science and divided into a new school: Frontier Interdisciplinary School. Ke Beilin said that the "Intelligent Science and Technology" major, which is more related to the artificial intelligence major, was assigned to the School of Intelligent Manufacturing and Science and Technology.

What puzzled Ke Beilin was that after the artificial intelligence major was assigned to the cutting-edge interdisciplinary college, the traditional engineering management was also assigned to this college. She didn't understand the logic of this, she just thought it was "a bit messy".

However, at the 211 University where Wang Xiaofen is located, which is dominated by liberal arts, the artificial intelligence major is set up under the School of Information and Communication Engineering, not the School of Computer Science set up by most schools. Wang Xiaofen explained, "Because (the school's) School of Information and Communication has a higher rating, it is eligible to offer another major."

According to the "National Standards for Classification and Codes of Subjects of the People's Republic of China", the major of artificial intelligence is currently one of the second-level disciplines under "Computer Science and Technology". Or because of this, the vast majority of undergraduate colleges choose to set up the artificial intelligence major under the School of Computer Science, or regard it as a major extended from the computer science major.

Therefore, the courses of artificial intelligence majors in many ordinary colleges and universities are very similar to the courses of computer majors. In the first year, almost all artificial intelligence majors will learn basic programming languages. In the second year, they start to learn about web design, front-end, data structure and other courses. It is not until the third year that they start to learn about neural networks, deep learning, intelligent voice, image recognition There are courses "branded" by artificial intelligence majors.

Some high school classmates asked Li Wanni: "What major did you study?" Li Wanni would even tell them directly, "Computer major", "because there is really no difference."

In addition, there are many "special courses" superimposed in the schedule. In the School of Information and Communication Engineering, Wang Xiaofen has to take compulsory courses such as analog circuits, but these courses are not set up in artificial intelligence majors in other schools. The students questioned the teacher that "this course is meaningless", but the teacher shook his head and said, "The teaching plan has been fixed and cannot be changed." By the time the next artificial intelligence major starts, this course has become an elective course. Zhang Tian took a physics experiment class in her sophomore year. In her school, physics experiments are compulsory for majors in science and engineering.

▲When there is a lot of homework, Ke Beilin dozes off while studying in front of the computer. Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee

Because of the knowledge and technology covering multiple disciplines, the workload of artificial intelligence is beyond many people's imagination. Wang Xiaofen recalled her busiest semester, from Monday to Thursday from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, elective or experimental courses in the evening, and Friday from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. Exhausted, Wang Xiaofen gave up club and departmental activities, and stayed in the dormitory on weekends to play with her mobile phone. At that time, internships were not considered at all, because for Wang Xiaofen, who had little rest time, she could not meet the minimum requirement of three days for internships required by most companies.

A variety of courses often take up Zhang Tian's entire week. She is not interested in courses like C language, but she still listens carefully and practices, and changes the code like a real programmer until one or two in the morning. But when the following classes became more and more difficult, she simply "took classes efficiently". Listen to a few sections of a class first, and give up if you really don't understand.

Since the code base has only been learned for more than a year, when artificial intelligence courses such as neural networks, pattern recognition, and deep learning really appear, many students can no longer keep up.

Compared with the highly competitive computer majors, students majoring in artificial intelligence may not have an advantage. Ke Beilin found that the programs compiled by seniors and seniors majoring in computer science are much more mature and complex than those majoring in artificial intelligence. Wang Xiaofen also said the same, "Anyone who chats alone with students majoring in computer science, or even looks at their homework, will find that we don't do any practical application, but just talk about theory and methods."

When she was a sophomore, Wang Xiaofen joined a team for an internship through finding acquaintances. The senior who brought her told Wang Xiaofen that the team only recruits two types of talents, one who can write codes and the other who understands AI. The senior also said, "Many of the things taught in the school and the things developed by artificial intelligence are derailed."

After ChatGPT became popular, none of Li Wanni's professional teachers mentioned this tool. At the 211 University where Wang Xiaofen works, students in the artificial intelligence class are not allowed to use ChatGPT to complete their homework.

Teacher teaches while learning

Facing the artificial intelligence major, it is not only the students who are not comfortable enough to deal with it, but also the teachers.

For most of the dual non-undergraduate colleges and universities following the first batch of 35 colleges and universities, in addition to the problems of thinking and design in setting up artificial intelligence majors, the lack of resources is also obvious.

In ordinary colleges and universities, there are not many teachers who really have a professional research background in artificial intelligence. However, the artificial intelligence major, which is regarded as an extension of the computer major, has many professional courses taught by teachers majoring in computer science.

Li Wanni still remembers that a teacher of an artificial intelligence major once asked the students to study by themselves in class, "You learn it yourself, I may not be as good as you", and the students burst into laughter. The teacher explained that he urgently participated in the training for about half a month during the summer vacation. The training was organized by a technology company. In addition, he also took MOOCs, and he learned the content first before teaching the content to the students.

Throughout the school, Li Wanni knew that the only teacher with a background in artificial intelligence was the young deputy dean of the college, a postdoctoral fellow who returned from studying in the United States, and the others were basically teachers with a computer background.

Zhang Tian is the kind of person who has worked hard to take every class well since her freshman year, but if she sees the teacher just reading PPT on the stage, she knows that there is a high probability that this class is "unnecessary".

Guo Zhiwei, an associate professor at Chongqing Technology and Business University's College of Science and Technology, is one of the teachers involved in the construction of the school's artificial intelligence major. During his undergraduate studies, he majored in communication engineering at Zhengzhou University, and completed his master's degree in communication engineering at Chongqing University. His specific research is data mining, which has a certain connection with artificial intelligence.

He doesn't deny the challenges the AI profession faces in its establishment phase. He came to the school to take office in 2018, and before that, the college had submitted materials for declaring a major in artificial intelligence. In 2019, his School of Economics and Information Technology began to set up a major in artificial intelligence, and asked him to start preparing to teach "Deep Learning", "Because most of the colleges and universities offering this major at the same time are also starting to practice for the first time, there is not much difference between them. The experience can be used for reference, but it is actually difficult to conduct in-depth discussion and teaching (inside the college).

For Guo Zhiwei, deep learning is also new knowledge. Before 2018, he had participated in research in the field of machine learning, "but this is relatively low-level learning, while deep learning is relatively high-level."

There are many difficulties, and advanced knowledge must be learned on its own initiative. Guo Zhiwei participated in the training organized by Baidu, which lasted less than a month, and later participated in various trainings organized by Tsinghua University Press and other institutions to learn deep learning. He studied for more than half a year by himself, and in the first half of 2021, he began to teach the course "Deep Learning". Because he already has some theoretical foundation of artificial intelligence, it is easier to learn than a teacher without foundation. For him, the most difficult learning is programming, just like undergraduates. "Deep learning models are prone to various errors, and how to solve them is also a challenge."

In-depth courses are for junior undergraduate students. Before teaching in 2021, Guo Zhiwei has already made mental preparations, "My goal is not too high. For undergraduates, the time spent on many classes may not be too much, so it is to master the basics of image recognition and text recognition. That’s fine, it’s quite difficult to actually involve programming.”

Because the major was too fresh, Guo Zhiwei found that there was no systematic and standard teaching material for "Deep Learning". Some of the existing teaching materials were more theoretical and lagged behind development, so he had to make his own handouts. This situation continued until this year, and he even prepared to write a textbook by himself.

At the same time, artificial intelligence majors need sufficiently powerful hardware resources for students to participate in practical courses. Guo Zhiwei explained that deep learning needs to be realized by programming, because the objects to be processed are complex and the amount of calculation is huge, so personal computers generally cannot carry such a volume. The key hardware is the GPU, that is, the image processing unit. The purchase price of a GPU is about 100,000 yuan, which is not a small amount for the college. Although Chongqing Technology and Business University has purchased several GPUs since the opening of the major in 2021, it is still "far from meeting the needs of most students. It can only be used by 10-15 individuals, and there are not enough points for graduate students."

Under restrictions, most of the computer experiment courses at Chongqing Technology and Business University use cloud computing resources provided by a major domestic company for teaching and practice. However, Guo Zhiwei also said that there are still operational differences between the deep learning tools of this big manufacturer and the mainstream deep learning tools in the world.

It is not easy for teachers to catch up with such a fast-changing subject as artificial intelligence. Take Baidu's deep learning tools as an example. Guo Zhiwei still used version 2.0 when he was teaching for the first time in 2021. This year it is already version 2.4. He is still exploring and learning new knowledge and tools.

After ChatGPT exploded this year, Guo Zhiwei just mentioned it in class, but didn't talk about it in depth. He himself is also a bit conflicted. Is the class easy to teach or difficult to teach? And because there is a high-level model behind this hot technology, the teacher himself is not very clear.

In the third year of teaching, Guo Zhiwei could sense how undergraduates feel about this major. He said frankly, "I think it's a bit difficult for them to major in artificial intelligence, and the interest does decline in the middle and late stages of study."

▲ Course content photographed by Ke Beilin. Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee

Things that artificial intelligence does not know

When she was most confused, Li Wanni posted on the Internet asking: "What to learn or what direction to graduate, I don't want to show it off."

A graduate student and practitioner in the direction of artificial intelligence "strongly" suggested that she change her direction, "This direction is not a top-level education, it is best not to cultivate it deeply, and change it to development for better employment and development." Some people followed up and said, "If you have strong ability, you can go to 985 and 211, and you need a particularly good foundation in mathematics and science to engage in artificial intelligence." But if you want to work in an algorithm post, it is difficult to find a job even if you graduate from a 985 undergraduate degree, and you have to continue to study for a master's degree to have the opportunity to "roll".

Guo Zhiwei told "People" that the reason why most double-non-general undergraduates classify artificial intelligence majors as majors evolved from computer majors is also to ensure employment. Some computer content, at least some software development, so you won’t be unable to find a job.” He believes that it is indeed difficult for undergraduate classes to fully meet the requirements of actual employment. Among the students he has taught, some have entered the field of artificial intelligence for employment, such as going to big factories to do data mining, "but the proportion is not high, only a few." Today, about 50%-60% of the students in his class will choose to take the postgraduate entrance examination.

Li Wanni also remembers that a deputy dean of the college said directly, "The major of artificial intelligence is to get a master's degree, otherwise the knowledge learned will stay at a very superficial stage." She has lost confidence in continuing to learn artificial intelligence, and even more so. Not to mention postgraduate entrance examination. An almost unimaginative choice is that she will be part of the Kaogong.

The reality is also constantly corroborating these claims. Ke Beilin submitted many algorithm-related internship resumes, but they were all rejected. She mentioned that there is an "AI intelligent trainer" on the market, which is responsible for labeling voice, video, and pictures, and high school students can also do it. Because it is hard to find a job, she has already lowered her expectations to this kind of mechanical position, which is actually just a post with the word "AI", but there are still few responses. She had the idea of taking the postgraduate entrance examination, but she also felt that she had to go to 985 and 211 to improve her academic qualifications.

At the moment, students majoring in artificial intelligence are not much different from undergraduates in other majors. Zhang Tian, who is in her junior year, decided to "follow the crowd", join the postgraduate entrance examination team early, and change to the computer major. She regrets learning artificial intelligence, but going back to 3 years ago, "Maybe there is no major that I can choose without regret."

As the first batch of undergraduates who stepped into the major of artificial intelligence, although they sometimes fell into fatigue and confusion, they still had the opportunity to touch the amazing side of this technology first. Wang Xiaofen used ChatGPT for the first time during her internship. At that time, the language model was not popular, and it was not as smart as it is now. She is responsible for asking questions to ChatGPT in the team, constantly adjusting the words and keywords of the inquiry to obtain valuable answers. She suddenly felt that "people are still irreplaceable." She believes that even if she does media-related work across majors in the future, this artificial intelligence learning experience may benefit her in the future.

For teachers, although the teaching work is still difficult, pioneers like Guo Zhiwei feel that it is still meaningful to offer artificial intelligence majors at the undergraduate level, because if you really want to train AI talents, you must start from the basic undergraduate level. I have started to grasp it, but it still takes time to explore the curriculum, learning standards and other aspects. "This is the content of the reform that needs to be considered emphatically."

As summer approaches, the popularity of artificial intelligence majors continues. The first batch of undergraduates majoring in artificial intelligence in ordinary colleges and universities is about to graduate. Whether the future road is easy to go, AI will not answer, time will.

(At the request of the interviewees, Zhang Tian, Li Wanni, Wang Xiaofen, and Ke Beilin are pseudonyms)