Meanwhile, UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid said the most exciting opportunities for CS graduates may lie outside traditional Silicon Valley tech giants.
“I have always contended that the most exciting applications of computer science are not at Facebook, Google, and Amazon,” Farid said, pointing instead to fields such as computational drug discovery, medical imaging, neuroscience, finance, and even digital humanities involving art and music.
Related video: This Is Why AI Should be Taken Seriously (Project Nightfall)
Why Learning to Code Still Matters
Despite AI’s growing ability to “vibe code,” Hinton remains a strong believer in teaching young students how to code. He likened it to learning Latin in a humanities education.
“You’re never going to speak Latin, but it’s still useful learning Latin,” Hinton said. “I think it’s very useful to learn to code.”
For Hinton, coding is an intellectual discipline—one that strengthens reasoning skills, even if AI handles much of the execution in the future.
