Thomas Haigh (thomas.haigh@gmail.com) is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, WI, USA, and a Comenius visiting professor at Siegen University, Germany.

When the ride-hailing company Uber sought to establish a new facility in Pittsburgh in 2015 focused on self-driving cars, it looked to the researchers and scientists at the nearby Carnegie Mellon University robotics center. Soon after, the company lured away 40 of the center's employees, including the director, with doubled salaries and bonuses in the hundreds of thousands. High-profile stories like these have contributed to a prevailing narrative that artificial intelligence experts leave academe for industry in droves. But the dearth of AI professors at U.S. universities is not the result of a distorted job market, according to a report issued this month from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Rather, AI experts remain interested in academic careers, but university hiring of AI faculty has not kept pace with student demand.

Tyson Navarro, 10, of Fremont, Calif., learns to build code using an iPad at a youth workshop at the Apple store in 2013. Code.org said a record number of female and under-represented minority students took AP computer science classes in 2018. SAN FRANCISCO -- Female, black and Latino students took Advanced Placement computer science courses in record numbers, and rural student participation surged this year, as the College Board attracted more students to an introductory course designed to expand who has access to sought-after tech skills. This year, 135,992 students took advanced placement (AP) computer science exams, a 31 percent increase from last year, according to data from the College Board, the organization that administers standardized tests that help determine college entrances as well as AP courses. Females and under-represented minorities were among the fastest growing groups.

Rankings of universities and specialized academic programs have a major influence on students deciding what university to attend, faculty deciding where to work, government bodies deciding where and how to invest education and research funding, and university leaders deciding how to grow their institutions.9 There is general agreement in scientometrics that the quality of a university or a program depends on many factors, and different ranking metrics might be appropriate for different types of users. However, major points of contention emerge when it comes to agreeing on ranking methodology.20 Given the increasing impact of rankings, there is a need to better understand the actors influencing rankings and come up with a justifiable, transparent formula that encourages high-quality education and research at universities.11 We aim to contribute toward achieving this objective by focusing on ranking of the U.S. doctoral programs in computer science. We broadly group quality measures into objective (such as average research funding per faculty member) and subjective (such as peer assessment). The influential U.S. News ranking of computer science doctoral programsa is based purely on peer assessment in which computer science department chairs are asked to score other computer science programs on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being "marginal" and 5 being "outstanding," or enter "do not know" if not sufficiently familiar with the program. The final ranking is obtained by averaging the individual scores.

While speaking at Shopify's annual conference in Toronto a few weeks ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got in some trouble for a few choice words. Calling for Canada to have "a little more swagger" when promoting its homegrown innovations on the global stage. The rival Conservative Party jumped on his comments, openly criticizing him. In response, Shopify's CEO penned an op-ed in The Globe and Mail defending Trudeau's remarks. While this might sound like mild drama, the sentiment comes at a time when global giants are already noticing Canada's rapid growth within certain high-tech sectors, and specifically those related to artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is poised to become one of the most disruptive technologies of the century. A new study of the top graduate programs for artificial intelligence, part of the closely watched U.S. News & World Report rankings, reveals which universities are poised to lead this revolution. The University of Washington's inclusion in to the top 5 suggests Seattle is rising as an AI hub to rival Silicon Valley. CMU and MIT's robust computer science and engineering departments make them unsurprising leaders in the field. U.S. News ranked artificial intelligence programs as part of its broader set of reports on the top graduate programs in the nation.

In 1978 a young woman named Maria Klawe arrived at the University of Toronto to pursue a doctorate in computer science. She had never used a computer--much less written a line of code--but she had a PhD in math and a drive to succeed in a male-dominated field. She was so good that, nine months later, the university asked her to be a professor. Today, however, computer science is one of the few STEM fields in which the number of women has been steadily decreasing since the '80s. In the tech industry, women hold only around one-fifth of technical roles.

Back in 2012, the Girl Scouts Research Institute conducted a survey, called the Generation STEM report, in which they discovered that 74 percent of teen girls are interested in STEM. However, that fades through middle and high school, in large part because their exposure to STEM isn't in a way that informs or supports their career decisions. Now, the Girl Scouts is launching its first computer science program, aimed at girls in grades 6–12. It's sponsored by defense contractor Raytheon. The goal of this program is to encourage girls to consider and pursue careers in fields such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics and data science.