UCSB computer science department now offers new artificial intelligence major

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence seems to have entirely reshaped what it means to be a university student in peripheral — and, for some, presumably innocuous — ways, such as using ChatGPT to craft a study guide or Otter.AI to transcribe a lecture. Now, for the first time, UC Santa Barbara students will be able to make artificial intelligence the focus of their undergraduate experience. 

As of this quarter, the UCSB computer science (CS) department has launched a new undergraduate major in artificial intelligence (AI). Designed to prepare students for a rapidly evolving technological landscape, the new AI major brings together fundamentals from across several disciplines to not only educate students about existing technologies, but to prepare them to be the next generation of AI developers. 

“At the core of modern AI is basically a very interesting combination of math, statistics, logic and computer science fundamentals,” Diba Mirza, teaching professor and vice chair of the computer science department, said. “The curriculum is really helping students build on that foundation, it’s about being equally strong in these pillars and bringing them together to not just understand the current technology but also create the technology of the future.”

Mirza helped lead the charge following a conversation with professor Tevfik Bultan that inspired the major. Together, Mirza and Bultan worked with CS Department Chair and distinguished professor Divyakant Agrawal to develop the program. The proposal for the new major was first submitted in the fall of 2024 and was approved by the UCSB Academic Senate in January 2026 to be implemented that fall. 

According to Mirza, she and her colleagues first weighed whether or not to overhaul and integrate AI within the existing CS major, or to create a new major altogether. Ultimately, they decided on the latter because they “could lay out what [they] wanted someone to know at the end of this degree, what they should be capable of doing and then work out all of the curriculum that they should go through more systematically to get to that point.”

“Those were the discussions that we had in our curriculum committee meetings and it just felt like a dedicated degree would help us think backwards and say, ‘OK, so for somebody to be really strong in this field, what is the foundation that they would need?’” Mirza said. 

UCSB is the second UC campus to offer a dedicated undergraduate degree in AI following UC San Diego, who launched their program in the fall of 2025. UC Merced plans to follow suit next fall with an undergraduate major while UC Berkeley will launch their master’s program in artificial intelligence and machine learning in the same semester. 

Nationwide, 355 U.S. universities currently offer degree programs in AI. In 2026 alone, 33 new programs have been announced and the number of dedicated AI programs has increased by 600% over the past six years. 

“The intention was that, because AI is changing CS and CS is changing AI, it was really clear that we need to do a better job of educating our students to understand the technology well enough that they could be the creators of the technology and that they could take it to the next level,” Mirza said. 

According to Undergraduate Advisor Jasmine Perez, 22 students enrolled in the first cohort of the major. Additionally, it’s anticipated that around 200 students will be pursuing the major by 2029. Currently, all of the students enrolled in the major are taking a seminar course with CS professor Xifeng Yan. So far, Mirza has received positive feedback from the students she has spoken to. 

“Overall, from what I’ve been hearing, it’s going really well,” she said. “Right now, through the seminar course, they’re seeing a lot of guest speakers from different fields that use AI in interesting ways and are furthering their fields. What we hope is that they’ll be really excited about what types of futures they can build with this degree.”

Given how rapidly AI technology is evolving, however, creating a curriculum that will remain relevant in years to come poses a challenge. To confront that challenge, Mirza emphasizes the importance of focusing on the fundamentals — the math, statistics, logic and computer science principles — of developing AI systems. 

“Whatever knowledge went into creating the current versions of ChatGPT or your favorite large language model, you need a deep enough technical understanding of all of that in order to bring about the next generation of AI,” Mirza said. 

But the curriculum doesn’t stop at technical knowledge alone. Amid growing concerns about AI’s seemingly ceaseless expansion into our everyday lives, Mirza views addressing the ethical considerations of these systems as key to building a holistic curriculum. 

“For AI, [ethics] is absolutely core and central. Things like fairness, bias, privacy and social impacts are really core principles that we want the graduates to be able to follow in what they create,” she said.  

The major will include the course CMPSC 183: Ethics, Privacy, Fairness, and Bias in AI and Computing, which will likely be taught by associate professor Michael Beyeler, whose research as director of the Bionic Vision Lab combines neuroscience and AI technology to advance sight restoration for the visually impaired. 

“The main goal of the course is that students don’t treat ethics as abstract afterthought but as a practical part of designing, evaluating, deploying and governing AI,” Mirza said. “Again, no one goes to build a racist AI, these things show up when you go to build a system and if ethics are an afterthought, it’s not going to work. It has to be something students think about up front.”

Additionally, Mirza is looking forward to integrating more cross-discipline collaboration into the curriculum. 

“It was designed to be highly interdisciplinary, there are lots of electives that students can take in other departments already and we really want to expand that. Lots of entities and people are working in AI that are not in computer science, they’re all across campus associated with various centers and departments and we really want to collaborate with anyone else in this space,” she said. 

Ultimately, Mirza views success in terms of producing graduates prepared to join this dynamic field in the early years of what has already been deemed “the AI revolution.”

“We want it to be a point of pride for UCSB to produce amazing graduates doing amazing things,” she said. “The goal is to produce graduates who can go out there and solve interesting and hard problems — human problems that have an impact on society and that we all care about. That would be the dream.”

A version of this article appeared on p.15 of the Oct. 29, 2026 edition of the Daily Nexus.