Should you still learn to code? Godfather of AI says says don’t give up on computer science degree just yet

With the rise of artificial intelligence, there has been a growing belief in the tech industry that coding would soon become redundant given that the new AI models become better and better at not just writing code but even at implementing them. However, Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as one of the Godfathers of AI, says that it might not be the right time to give up on your computer science degrees just yet.

"Many people think a CS degree is just programming or something," Hinton told Business Insider, "Obviously, just being a competent mid-level programmer is not going to be a career for much longer, because AI can do that."

Hinton predicted that a CS degree is valuable more than just coding, and belives that a “CS degree will be valuable for quite a long time.”

The Nobel prize and Turing award winner draws a parallel of learning coding to how humanities students learn Latin. He said, "I think it's very useful to learn to code and even if they end up not having AI do all the coding for them,"

"I think learning to code is, it is maybe a bit like learning Latin is if you're in the humanities or something, you're never going to speak Latin, but it's still useful learning Latin." Hinton added

"Some skills that are always going to be valuable, like knowing some math, and some statistics, and some probability theory, knowing things like linear algebra that will always be valuable," he further noted

What do other AI leaders think on computer science degree?

OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor had also put forward a similar sentiment about computer science degrees in an episode of Lenny's podcast earlier in the year.

Taylor said, “I still think studying computer science is a different answer than learning to code, but I would say I still think it's extremely valuable to study computer science. I say that because I think computer science is more than coding”

Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had also talked about the importance of still knowing the fundamental of software building even though AI would be doing a bulk of the job in the future.

He said, “Just getting real fundamentals on sort of software. If you're a software engineer, I think still matters a lot to me.”

“Having the ability to think computationally is important.” Nadella added

On oth other end of the spectrum is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang who famously said early last year, which is a lot of time in the world of AI, that students shouldn't learn to code and instead focus on more valuable areas like biology, education, manufacturing, or farming.

"It is our job to create Computing technology such that nobody has to program and that the programming language is human. Everybody in the world is now a programmer, this is the miracle of artificial intelligence" Huang said last year.