UC Santa Barbara’s new undergraduate major in artificial intelligence (AI) launches this fall with a freshman seminar taught by computer science professor Xifeng Yan.

The seminar, CMPSC 1A, will introduce students to topics expected to include vibe coding, agentic AI, robotics, AI safety, and AI for science. Guest speakers from UCSB and industry will provide their perspective on uses, challenges, and potential for AI in a range of different research areas. 

"AI is reshaping society, and there's real debate about whether it will be a force for good or pose serious risks. We want to train the next generation of people who understand AI in a foundational, deep way, and who go on to create AI that serves humankind,” said computer science (CS) teaching professor and vice chair Diba Mirza, who developed the AI major with CS professor Tevfik Bultan and CS department chair and distinguished professor, Divy Agrawal. “The seminar gives students that broader view early, before they specialize, so they understand the field they're about to help shape."

Learning from Yan, a renowned AI researcher and professor, promises to be especially engaging for students, Mirza said. Yan holds the department’s Venkatesh Narayanamurti Endowed Chair, and has received honors including an NSF CAREER Award and the IBM Invention Achievement Award. He has been an invited speaker on large language models at both international conferences and industry events.

Yan’s seminar will explore the creative possibilities of AI while introducing students to the ethical questions that are central to the new major. 

We learned more about the seminar from Yan earlier this month.

Q: Why did you decide to teach this seminar?

Yan: This fall, we are launching our new undergraduate AI program. As part of that program, we want students to be exposed to AI early in their education. AI is advancing at an extraordinary pace and is beginning to transform almost every field. At the same time, there is often a gap between what students hear about AI in the news and what the technology can actually do. We created this seminar to help students understand AI beyond the headlines, demystify how it actually works, and give them a broader view of where the field is heading.

Q: What is your goal for the seminar?

Yan: My goal is to give students a panoramic view of modern AI, its past, its present, and its  potential future. AI is much broader than ChatGPT or large language models. It includes machine learning, robotics, computer vision, scientific discovery, autonomous agents, and many other rapidly developing areas.

I also want to connect the classroom with the real world. By inviting speakers from both academia and industry, students can hear firsthand what problems people are working on today, what challenges remain unsolved, and where new opportunities may emerge. 

Q: Are there particular aspects of the seminar that you think students will be especially interested in?

Yan: I think students will be particularly interested in generative AI and large language models: What are inside these techniques? What are scaling laws? What problems have not been solved, and what potential problems it can cause? I expect some of the most exciting moments will come when students discover that AI is not that difficult. They can quickly build an agentic AI program to solve their daily problems and there are broad applications of AI in scientific discovery, healthcare, or other emerging areas. 

The speakers will bring something that is difficult to get from a textbook: personal experience. Students can hear how researchers choose important problems, how new ideas become real technologies, what challenges industry is facing, and what skills will matter in the coming years. I think that direct interaction will be a valuable part of the seminar. 

Q: What do you hope students will get out of the class?

Yan: First, I hope our students start to use AI, the newest AI. The best way to learn is to use it and observe what it can and cannot do. 

Second, I want them to understand how we got to today’s AI — the key ideas and lessons from the past and how they led to what we have now.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, I want students to develop curiosity. If a seminar leaves a student thinking, “That is an interesting problem. I want to learn more about it,” then it has accomplished something important. I hope they can start to incubate their own interest within AI.