As students, teachers and employers wrestle with the demands of an increasingly AI-powered world, the University of Washington has a new proposition: an interdisciplinary AI minor, with an anthropologist and a computer scientist at the helm.
Set for launch in Spring 2027 at the Seattle campus, the program is the latest of several moves the university has made to push itself toward global leadership in AI education and research — including new graduate programs, a partnership with Microsoft and a $10 million AI initiative.
“Students will be able to come to the University of Washington, study a field they are passionate about, and also understand AI and how it relates to that field of study,” said Magda Balazinska, director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and co-chair of the group designing the new curriculum.
Nationwide, universities are racing to build AI literacy into their curricula. Cornell launched an AI minor in Fall 2024, open to students across all majors. Michigan, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech have similar programs underway, and Northeastern Illinois University recently announced a standalone undergraduate AI degree.
‘Many perspectives to AI’
In February 2024, Provost Tricia Serio announced a university-wide AI task force, saying an institutional AI strategy was “no longer a choice.” With 80 members across five groups, the task force spent months developing a comprehensive plan.
Among several recommendations, the task force proposed creating an AI minor to engage the “societal aspects of AI” beyond technical training. Balazinska and anthropology professor Ben Marwick are co-leading the development of the new minor, alongside representatives from 18 academic units spanning Architecture to the School of Nursing.
“All units will be welcome to propose and teach courses in the minor,” Balazinska told GeekWire, “because there are many perspectives to AI.”
In a recent survey, about 53% of employers said they struggle to find graduates with the right AI skills, and most said universities are not keeping up, according to a Pearson and Amazon Web Services report. Meanwhile, a review of AI literacy studies found that most efforts skew toward technical literacy over the critical and ethical literacy that UW is looking to provide.
The proposed curriculum has four key pillars:
- Students will be required to take at least one course on the ethics, implications, impacts and limitations of AI;
- Students will complete core technical courses that cover data-driven predictive models, AI-driven decision-making and generative AI;
- Students will complete a project using AI tools or techniques to solve a problem in their discipline, comparing the AI approach against what they would have achieved without it; and
- Students will have access to a broad suite of AI-focused electives.
Balazinska’s team is revising the proposal after circulating it across campus for feedback. With the academic year now wrapped up, further review is set for the fall.
UW’s growing AI investment
The minor is part of an expanding array of AI-focused programs at UW. In 2025, the Allen School launched a stackable Graduate Certificate in Modern AI Methods, a part-time evening program for those in various industries who want to develop AI and machine learning expertise.
In October, UW was named one of nine universities to benefit from Amazon’s AI PhD Fellowship program, allotted $2.2 million over two years for doctoral research in AI. This February, the university and Microsoft announced an expanded partnership to provide students with AI computing resources and internship opportunities, launch an AI course for working Washingtonians, and, starting this fall, pair students with Microsoft employees on the Redmond campus.
The university also launched a campus-wide AI initiative, thanks to a $10 million gift from Microsoft pioneer Charles Simonyi. The initiative, AI@UW, coordinates AI investments across student success, research, teaching and resources — including grants for developing AI-integrated teaching projects across disciplines.
Surrounding an AI@UW launch event earlier this year, some faculty pushed back on AI use and questioned the technology’s role in education. A survey of UW Arts & Sciences students also found mixed reviews, including concerns about losing academic skills to AI and inconsistent faculty guidance across departments.
“There’s no getting away from AI now,” one international studies major said in the survey report. “But it’s important that we understand what we stand to lose when we use these services more and more.”
Is an AI Institute on the horizon?
The minor may be a first step toward an interdisciplinary AI Institute at UW, one of several suggestions from the task force. Recommendations ranged from hiring 100 new AI-focused faculty to upgrading the university’s supercomputing infrastructure.
“Within five years, more than 10% of our faculty would have expertise in AI resulting in national and international leadership in AI across the full campus,” read the report, published in late 2024.
Other suggestions included rollouts of advanced AI tools across the administrative backend as well as in teaching environments, such as using ChatGPT to answer questions on course message boards. They recommended every first-year student complete a basic AI literacy module, similar to Title IX requirements.
“As AI systems become embedded in the tools, workflows and decisions that shape daily life,” Balazinska said, “students in every discipline need more than passing familiarity with these technologies.”
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