AI is changing tech careers, but it won’t take away the importance of a STEM degree, says Demis Hassabis.
In an interview at a London business conference, the video of which was published on Wednesday, the DeepMind CEO said that knowing the fundamentals of software can give you a leg up in using AI.
“You absolutely needed to lean into STEM and computer science,” Hassabis said. “It’s just a higher-level programming language is the way you can think about what programming is going to become.”
Hassabis, who cofounded DeepMind in 2010, which Google acquired in 2014, said that people first used machine code, then C, then Python. But the future of programming languages may be English.
“You’re still going to need to know about architecting things and best software engineering practices,” he said. “Those people who understand the deep technical, they’ll be able to use these tools 10 times more effectively than people who don’t have that technical knowledge.”
The DeepMind CEO said AI also creates the need for people to study ethics and social sciences.
“I also believe that the time is now for the humanities like philosophy, economics. I think we really need them in the world we’re about to enter,” he said.
Hassabis is among tech leaders who are quelling fears that degrees like computer science and engineering are becoming redundant because of vibe coding.
In an interview with Business Insider in December, Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” highlighted the value of computer science degrees.
“Obviously, just being a competent mid-level programmer is not going to be a career for much longer, because AI can do that,” Hinton said. But the value of a CS degree is much more than just coding, which is why he thinks a “CS degree will be valuable for quite a long time.”
Max Levchin, the CEO of Affirm, has also said that computer science fundamentals are key to distinguishing good code from “garbage.”
“There’s a matter of taste and elegance in programming,” he said on a podcast earlier this year. “That’s certainly important to me as a programmer, and without having a solid foundation in computer science, I wouldn’t be able to have that conversation.”
