Business Insider reports that UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid recently shared his insights on the changing landscape of the computer science industry during an episode of Nova’s Particles of Thought podcast. Farid, who is renowned for his expertise in deepfake videos, noted that the job market for computer science graduates has drastically changed in just four years.
After the host told Farid that his son was struggling to find employment after graduating in computer science with top marks, “For people like your son, by the way, who four years ago were promised, go study computer science, it’s going to be a great career. It is future-proof — that changed in four years,” Farid said. “That is astonishing.”
Farid’s observations are backed by the experiences of UC Berkeley students, who typically had multiple internship offers and high-paying job prospects upon graduation. However, the current reality is starkly different. “Our students typically had five internship offers throughout their first four years of college,” Farid explained. “They would graduate with exceedingly high salaries, multiple offers. They had the run of the place. That is not happening today. They’re happy to get one job offer.”
While the rise of AI and the phenomenon of “vibecoding,” in which non-programmers rely on AI to actually write code, have contributed to the industry’s upheaval, Farid believes that the challenges facing computer science graduates are the result of a confluence of factors. “Something is happening in the industry,” he said. “I think it’s a confluence of many things. I think AI is part of it. I think there’s a thinning of the ranks that’s happening, that’s part of it, but something is brewing.”
The shifting landscape has prompted Farid to adjust the advice he gives to students. In the past, he encouraged students to pursue a broad education while developing deep expertise in one specific area. Now, he suggests that students cultivate a diverse skill set to adapt to the uncertain future of the industry.
“What I used to tell people is you want a broad education,” Farid said. “You should know about physics, and language, and history, and philosophy, but then you have to go deep, deep — like deep, deep into one thing, become really, really good at one thing. Now, I think I’m telling people to be good at a lot of different things because we don’t know what the future holds.”
Despite the challenges, Farid believes that those who embrace emerging technologies like AI will have a competitive edge in their respective fields. “I don’t think AI is going to put lawyers out of business, but I think lawyers who use AI will put those who don’t use AI out of business,” he said. “And I think you can say that about every profession.”
Despite Farid’s belief that AI will help lawyers to so far, up to this point it has primarily served to get lawyers in trouble due to “hallucinations,” such as made-up case citations. As Breitbart News previously reported:
In an internal letter shared in a court filing, Morgan & Morgan’s chief transformation officer cautioned the firm’s more than 1,000 attorneys that citing fake AI-generated cases in court documents could lead to serious consequences, including potential termination. This warning comes after one of the firm’s lead attorneys, Rudwin Ayala, cited eight cases in a lawsuit against Walmart that were later discovered to have been generated by ChatGPT, an AI chatbot.
The incident has raised concerns about the growing use of AI tools in the legal profession and the potential risks associated with relying on these tools without proper verification. Walmart’s lawyers urged the court to consider sanctions against Morgan & Morgan, arguing that the cited cases “seemingly do not exist anywhere other than in the world of Artificial Intelligence.”
In response to the incident, Ayala was immediately removed from the case and replaced by his supervisor, T. Michael Morgan, Esq. Morgan expressed “great embarrassment” over the fake citations and agreed to pay all fees and expenses related to Walmart’s reply to the erroneous court filing. He emphasized that this incident should serve as a “cautionary tale” for both his firm and the legal community as a whole.
Read more at Business Insider here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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