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Rising Number Of College Students Majoring In Artificial Intelligence; Top A.I. Trends To Watch In 2026; Flavor Flav Sponsors Team USA Bobsled, Skeleton Teams. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 24, 2025 - 06:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[06:32:36]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The A.I. boom is influencing campuses in many ways. The latest is not worry about the use of A.I. by students, but it's that students can now get a degree in artificial intelligence. A new program, for example, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, is called artificial intelligence and decision making. The degree is soaring in popularity, and they're not alone.

Joining me now, Samuel Madden. He is a distinguished professor at MIT's College of Computing.

Thank you so much for being here.

Everyone is talking about A.I. almost all the time. Both the good, bad and ugly of it. Why does A.I. deserve to be its own field of study and having its own degree, versus just having a computer science degree, for example?

SAMUEL MADDEN, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, MIT COLLEGE OF COMPUTING: Hi, Sara. It's great to be here.

Yeah, I think -- I think A.I. as a degree, I mean, it's a little bit not surprising that students are very excited about this. I would say it's this -- everybody here, everybody talking about artificial intelligence all the time. You see some of these eye-popping numbers about the job offers that people are getting.

And I think we created this degree because we felt that there were. While A.I. has some overlap with computing and computer science, students who study A.I. still learn how to program. They still take math classes.

We recognize that there were a set of skills that were required to use A.I. effectively, that were a little bit different from computing. So, we teach students, for example, how to work with really big data sets, how to build these predictive models on top of them, that can do analysis with the data. And then also how to sort of treat these A.I. models responsibly. Think about the societal impacts of the work that they do.

So, we felt that it was important to create this sort of separate major from computer science.

SIDNER: It's really interesting. And of course, students are interested in it. A lot of people are because it is a new tool that is being used all over the place. And I guess the question it begs is there's been a lot of talk about the fact that A.I. is going to replace jobs.

What will the students be learning about things like ethics when it comes to this? Will that be a part of what they are learning as they look at how A.I. is impacting the country?

MADDEN: Absolutely. So, one of the things that we've created as a part of this A.I., this initiative is a new -- as part of this degree is a new initiative called the social and ethical responsibilities of computing.

[06:35:08]

And the idea is to infuse ideas around ethics into our curriculum and our courses. So everybody who majors in this new A.I. major has to take has to fulfill a social and ethical responsibilities requirement, a requirement, as we call it. And there's a list of classes that they can take to do that. And these include things about the broader impact of A.I., like, for example, how A.I. might be being used in law or real estate or medicine, and what are the sort of ethical concerns around using it in places like that. And there's very these classes tend to be very discussion focused, very you know, having students think critically about the use of A.I. in these settings.

SIDNER: It is fascinating. Do you think A.I. is basically just going to become part of the way that everyone learns and everyone teaches? At some point, there are discussions about whether or not it should be used by students, as they're trying to learn some of these things. Of course, they would be using it in this particular course.

MADDEN: Sure. I mean, I think in some sense the cat is out of the bag in terms of people using A.I. in their, in their studies. You see, these results of the surveys about the number of high school and college students who routinely use these chat agents for, for their work, you know?

And so, I think we're going to have to evolve the way that we teach and practice education in order to infuse A.I. and teach students how to use A.I. responsibly.

I think also, one of the things you see a lot of people asking is, well, why? You know, if A.I. can write fluently or if A.I. can program fluently, why are we bothering to teach students these things? And I think from the point of view of MIT, we feel like it's really important to teach people skills, like, for example, how to be a good writer, because being a good writer is how you learn to think critically, how you learn to formulate arguments.

And so, if we outsource that to A.I., we feel like that's really problematic. And so we're really working hard to create courses and curriculum that you know, teach still teach students these skills that we feel are essential.

SIDNER; Critical thinking, all important. Samuel Madden, thank you so much for walking us through that. Appreciate it.

Let's talk more about this now. Joining us now is CNN A.I. correspondent Hadas Gold, and TechRadar editor at large, Lance Ulanoff, joining us as well.

Great to see you, guys. Thanks for being here.

Hadas, kind of just broadly looking ahead, what does it appear that 2026 has in store for A.I.?

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: We've already seen A.I. dominating 2025, and I think we're going to see A.I. further dominating 2026. But really becoming a part of our day-to-day lives, especially as some of the big companies that we interact with on a daily basis, start putting A.I. as part of our regular experience with them. I'm thinking of a company like Google, and they're going to start deploying agentic A.I. That means Gemini is going to start being part of your Gmail, your Google calendar, your Google searches even more so.

And as we start seeing Gemini into those like really dig deep into all those things that you use on a day-to-day basis, it's going to feel like your daily companion way more than it does today.

BOLDUAN: And, Lance, one thing that -- I mean, if there's any characteristic of A.I. development, it's been that it just is moving so fast. But does that mean better? I mean, what are you thinking in terms of, you know, 2026? Is there like an overcorrection on this front or is it going to, you know, is it going to become so -- or does it just continue barreling ahead?

LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR AT LARGE, TECHRADAR: No. Well, as I love to say, you know, were living on A.I. time. That means everything goes at 3x what it used to be with technology, there's no slowing down. There's always corrections.

So, you might notice that with OpenAI, they constantly deliver new updates and models. And often they break things or people don't like them. You know, this year we had GPT-5 show up and everyone was upset because it wasn't as emotional as interesting. And they're like, oh, yeah. Oh, and they also took away access to that. So, then they kind of redid it and went back.

And every time they do something where they, you know, intellectual property, they'll put out a model that can use other properties and they'll be like, oh, our bad. They'll redo it. That is going to continue in 2026. You know, we see GPT-6, it's going to be a major update. And it'll probably have things that people won't like.

And they'll go, oh yeah, you know what? Let's come out with GPT-6.1. So that's really the cadence. And by the way, they're not the only ones. This is how everybody works in the A.I. space. It is a massive race to no finish because it's just going to keep expanding. BOLDUAN: Right. The end goal is none like it just keeps going.

GOLD: I think that you're going to see -- I think you're going to see OpenAI be challenged more and more in terms of its dominance of the industry. Where are you seeing that happening in 2025, when Gemini 3 came out, there was a lot of excitement over how good this model was. And as we see these different models advance more and more, I think you are going to see OpenAI's dominance of the industry be threatened a little bit, not only because of different models, because of also the concerns about their businesses and all the investments that they're having, and whether they're going to be making the revenue that they need to be making in order to pay these investments.

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BOLDUAN: So, Lance, one thing that clearly became a trend in 25 is just the astronomical level of investment in A.I. I mean, when you look from google to Microsoft to Amazon and Meta, we're talking tens of billions of dollars, like over and over again on artificial intelligence. Is it have to be out of necessity, more of the same in '26, or are you thinking like more and more were looking at an A.I. bubble in the next 12 months?

ULANOFF: I really don't believe in the A.I. bubble. I just don't see that as a thing. We are in the sort of go fast, go far mode of this. That's why everyone spending so much.

We have to remember that there's tremendous competition coming out of China. The U.S. companies are very, very much aware of that, and they know they have to go as quickly as possible. And then there's just the internal competition that, you know, were talking about here in Gemini versus Google versus OpenAI. They both have to and they will continue to invest.

I think the question is, you know, that there will be questions of profitability in 2026. And, you know, one of the things we've been talking about is that OpenAI may be experimenting with putting ads inside of prompt results. So, you put in a prompt, you get a result, you also get relevant contextual ads. And that's a quick way of making money.

And the other thing I would say on this front is that have the sort of the split between the people who like to chat, versus the people who like to Google, which is basically become fully on Gemini.

SIDNER: Hadas, one of the big things that -- I mean, look, it's a huge part of the conversation, but we haven't really seen anything in it in terms of result is regulation. You have states that are trying to put in place regulation to put some guardrails around A.I. You have the federal government saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, we want a one federal policy rather than a haphazard patchwork of 50 different A.I. regulations.

What is this going to look like in '26?

GOLD: I don't think we're going to have a set form of laws that are suddenly going to be governing. I mean, think about social media. We've been talking about regulating social media now for decades.

BOLDUAN: A hundred percent.

GOLD: Nowhere closer to having sort of a set, really hard set of laws that help us regulate social media as we've seen other countries do especially in places like Europe and Australia. But I think what's really interesting here is when you look at the polling, if A.I. were a political candidate, they would not be doing very well. A lot of people are very concerned about A.I., and this is a really interesting split, especially when you look in President Trump's base, the MAGA base, we're seeing a huge split there where we have the sort of techno right, the David Sacks and the Peter Thiels who don't want any regulation. They want this kind of federal moratorium on the state level regulations.

But then you have a lot of people in their base that kind of led by Steve Bannon, who are saying this is a threat. A lot of people are fearful not only for their jobs, but also things like A.I. safety, their children, using these chatbots, what's it going to do to their jobs? There's a lot of concern there.

And I think that political split is going to eventually come to a boil and affect the attempts at regulation. Weve seen President Trump, you know, signing these executive orders around A.I. and saying that there should be a federal moratorium against state level regulations. And you can kind of see the point of view from the A.I. companies because they're looking (AUDIO GAP). They don't want to deal with 50 different state laws.

You can understand why that would be confusing, especially when A.I. and technology crosses border. They don't want to have to deal with different laws in California versus Colorado versus New York. But there has to be some sort of balance there between the fears of A.I. and the legitimate safety concerns, as well as the need for innovation and the need for the American A.I. industry to beat out China's.

BOLDUAN: Finally, Lance had mentioned it. What about human jobs? That is such a big fear right now. Like A.I. is going to take my job in 2026. Is that going to happen in a big way?

ULANOFF: Well, you'll be glad to know I'm not yet A.I., but I think about this every day and I've seen -- you know, okay, we have Tilly Norwood, for example, right. The first A.I. actress. Now, she hasn't done any major roles. No one has hired her yet. Although I've heard that she's gotten offers.

But, you know, we are seeing A.I. entities in backgrounds in ads and ad product. We are seeing a lot of writing being done, sort of entry level stuff. There's absolutely a case to be made for the argument that A.I. is taking entry level jobs in the creative space. It's faster people, it's cheaper for a lot of companies, and they're doing it, and it's creating a lot of disruption.

I think the question is, what kind of new jobs will emerge out of this next year? And I think, you know, I jokingly talked about this, but now I think it's real that, you know, prompt writing, like learning how to write prompts to get the final result. If you, you know, there's something called vibe coding, which is essentially that where you're just writing prompts to get code, you're never actually coding, but it's similar to that in that any result you want of A.I., you have to have a really good prompt.

So that is a skill. But there will be more new jobs like that. But first, we're going through this tremendous disruption.

BOLDUAN: That is definitely the case.

[06:45:02]

Lance, it's great to see you. Hadas, thank you both so much.

Ahead just call it the coolest running. Flavor Flav joins us next to talk about his new role as hype man for the U.S. Olympic bobsled and skeleton teams

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SIDNER: Cool Runnings, the Flavor Flav edition the rapper, known for his distinctive voice, vibe and of course, his blinged out clocks, is joining the U.S. bobsled and skeleton team as a sponsor and hype man for the Winter Olympics in Italy next year. He became one of the more unexpected but completely standout stars of the Summer Games in Paris when he hyped for the U.S. water polo teams.

And now look at that. He's trading in the ice around his neck for the ice in the bobsled track, promoting the games on the socials and taking a run on the course himself.

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FLAVOR FLAV: Yeah. I did it.

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BOLDUAN: And the one and only Flava Flav joins us now.

It's so good to see you and have you here. I've had this question since the Paris Olympics, which is how in the world did this come about? I'm obsessed. I want you to hype everything. But how did this come about?

FLAVOR FLAV, RAPPER: Well, it all started when I met a young lady that, you know, from the bobsled team. She offered me to come up to, you know, to take a bobsled ride, you know? So that's where this whole thing started at, by me being offered a bobsled ride. Next thing you know, I get around the team and I'm like, hey, why? You know, why don't I? Why don't I sponsor you guys? You know what I'm saying? The whole nine. So here I am now, an official sponsor and hype man for the United

States Olympic bobsled team, and I still the and I still am the sponsor also for the United States Olympic water polo team too as well.

So it's an honor to be able to be a sponsor, you know, and also, I'm trying to set the trend, you know what I'm saying? Flavor Flav, always known to be a trendsetter. And I'm trying to set a trend to see if I can get a lot more celebrities like myself to come and sponsor these Olympic teams. These Olympic teams do need some sponsorship.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You keep wearing outfits like that, like you did when you rode the skeleton right there. I am sure you will get more people on board.

Mr. Flav, I just have to say, it's an honor to get to speak with you. It's an honor to get to speak with you. You did get to skeleton, and you maybe can answer a question that I've had for a long time. What's the difference between, like, a good skeleton ride and a bad skeleton ride? Because basically you're getting on a sled head first and going down. So. So how do you do it better?

FLAVOR FLAV: Well, I ain't going to lie, but a bad skeleton ride is when you -- when you start near the bottom of the mountain, a good skeleton ride is when you start at the top, because it's more smoother and you don't. You don't feel the bumps as much and you don't bump into the to the ice walls as much. You know what I mean?

So, I ain't going to lie, but I am a daredevil. I am an adrenaline junkie. I had to do it. I couldn't -- I couldn't hold that back. It was on the bucket list. And not only that, but I also joined the team now. So I'm a member of the bobsled team.

SIDNER: What? That's the breaking news that Flavor Flav is a member of the bobsled team. I cannot wait to see this.

I did want to talk to you about what you did --

FLAVOR FLAV: Yes.

SIDNER: -- for one of the Olympian athletes, Veronica Fraley. You paid her rent when she had posted on Instagram, and she posted on social media that she, you know, she was running out of money.

Does it bother you that these athletes, many of them are sort of in these barely making ends meet? And here you -- here you come and say, hey, let me help you. Let me let me get you there

FLAVOR FLAV: Well, let me tell you like this. You know, every, every athlete, you know, wants to -- wants to feel comfortable and know that, you know, somebody's got their back, you know what I'm saying? And this girl, I mean, these athletes are out here really trying hard, you know what I'm saying?

And when they're not, when they're not competing, they're at home living active lives, working like two and three jobs and stuff, you know, and they got rent and stuff to pay, you know what I'm saying? So, when they have to go to practice, that takes them away from their jobs or when they have to go to compete, it takes them away from their jobs, you know what I'm saying?

And I knew for a fact that this girl, this girl, Veronica, man, she had a real good chance at getting a gold medal. And by her rent not being paid, that would have sent her home. And that would have just crushed her dreams.

So I said, you know what? Let me help out. Let me help this girl stay out here so she can try to get that medal. And that was my purpose for helping her out.

SIDNER: And we see her biting one right there. We just -- it's such a beautiful thing that you did.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so sponsor, member of the bobsled team and official hype man. Could we get some hype? What should people be expecting when the U.S. bobsled and skeleton team take to the ice in the winter?

FLAVOR FLAV: Honestly, to tell you the truth, you might get a surprise because I'm getting ready to go up there and I'm going to take some -- I'm going to take some skeleton lessons, and I want to learn how to try to compete. Don't be surprised if y'all fight Flavor Flav out there on the track.

[06:55:02]

SIDNER: Yeah, boy.

BOLDUAN: I mean, that is the only hype one ever needs.

BERMAN: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: We're also looking for sponsors. If you would like to sponsor a very special show called CNN NEWS CENTRAL from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m.

SIDNER: We will also, I hear you have 100 of your clock necklaces. We will also take one of those as our sponsorship mascot. If you -- if you so want to share that.

FLAVOR FLAV: Whoa. That's slammin'! That's slammin'! And hey, listen, if y'all want to come in with Flav, you know what I'm saying? CNN. Let's go baby.

Yeah, boy. CNN stepping up to the plate. Stepping up to the plate. Yeah. Boy, I love you. CNN.

BERMAN: And --

SIDNER: And we love you.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. Literally nothing. No mas. That is perfection.

Flavor Flav is the bomb. And we are thankful that you are here today. Thank you.

Ahead, scammers are going even higher tech. How they are using deepfake technology now to target innocent people and their loved ones.

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