Q&A: Inside HCC’s new artificial intelligence degree with one of its first students

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Each week, "Pop Quiz" features an interview with a member of Greater Houston's education community. To suggest someone we should interview with an interesting story to tell, email us at .

Meet the interviewee

Muskaan Shahzad has been all over the world in recent years — she attended high school in Kuwait, earned an associates degree in Pakistan, and lived in Canada and New York.

But she feels her most recent move was serendipitous.

Shahzad came to the Bayou City, where some of her family was living and studying, not long before Houston Community College launched its artificial intelligence bachelor's program.

The new program has been a particular point of pride for Houston Community College since it launched in fall 2023, making HCC the first Texas community college to offer a four-year AI degree. HCC leaders have said they aim to put the college at the forefront of AI education, an increasingly hot topic for education leaders nationwide.

Here's a look inside the program from one of its first students.

What made you decide to pursue a degree in HCC's brand-new artificial intelligence program?

I came here to Houston in 2019, and I was previously pursuing a degree in psychology. I love psychology, and I still do, but I did it for two years, earned my associates (degree), and then I came to realize that in psychology, I have to pursue a master's or a Ph.D. to be able to get a job that'll be sustainable for livelihood.

I was going through a crisis. I was reaching out to all of my friends. They were like, "You're halfway through your degree, are you really gonna change your major right now?" I was like, "I'd rather do it right now than get one or two more years in, years in, and then regret it like, 'Oh, I literally cannot get a job.'"

So I was like, "You know what? Let me go for something technical." I grew up with a lot of male cousins, and most of them were in the computer science field, and they were always like, "It's so hard." I was already very intimidated by it. ... But I was like, let me give this a try.

At that time, how did you find out about this specific program?

I went to Houston Community College's website ... I was researching Cisco (information technology) certifications, and (HCC's programs were) all arranged in alphabetical order. I always tell people that it was me being at the right place at the right time. The very first thing I see is their artificial intelligence associates program. ... So I was like, this is very interesting. Let me see what this is about. ... Let me give this a try.

As soon as I graduated with my associates ... that's when they started the bachelor's program. So I was able to seamlessly transfer into the bachelor's program.

I feel very lucky to be at the very right place at the very right time.

What was drawing you to attend a community college, as opposed to other institutions?

So the thing is, I was still experimenting with it. If you enroll for one course, it's basically the same curriculum at a four-year institute and at a community college. But at a community college, if you're in-district, you'll be paying like $300 to $400 for that class.

My reason to choose community college was definitely my (lack of) experience. ... It was my hard-earned money. Let me not spend it somewhere where, if I (decided not to) pursue that degree anymore, that money is literally down the drain.

AI is a topic that stirs up a lot of misunderstanding and confusion. If you were to describe what you're learning to someone who has no experience with or knowledge of AI, how would you explain it?

We're studying how to ease the regular human life when it comes to machinery.

For example, humans have different tasks, and we have chores, too. If there's something that can help us with regular chores, then maybe we can focus on other things. Then maybe AI can help us in getting there.

People have in their heads, from Hollywood and stuff when it comes to AI, that there's gonna be ... a fight between humans and robots. But the thing is, the machines that we're creating, it's basically in our hands how we want to operate it. So it doesn't necessarily depend on the robot or the machine that we're working on.

Anybody who does not have any idea what AI is, except for an opinion they get from the media, I would say that it basically depends on the person that's operating that specific machine or AI system, and at the end of the day, it's not the machines that need to be feared. It's the humans. ... It's how greedy a company or person can get when it comes to AI, because this is a very revolutionary tool. ... AI is the next big revolutionary thing. The dangerous thing is how greedy companies can get with it, if they're focusing more on the finances they can bring in, instead of how these innovations can serve the general public.

Give me a window into your studies. What is the best class that you've taken so far, and what did you learn?

There was an Intro to Machine Learning class that I took my very first semester.

These days we have this concept of, "Oh, I just mentioned this thing, and now they're advertising it on my phone. I didn't even Google it. I didn't even search for it." ... The phones that we have, they're always listening. It's not ethical, but our data is being shared, whether we like it or not. So in the machine learning class, we learned different types of machine learning — which is supervised machine learning and unsupervised machine learning — and then how you can feed loads and loads of data into a machine. When it's fed with so much data, it can predict results on its own. And then if you feed it enough, it's accurate, as well.

For example, a human child would, early on, know the difference between a cat and a dog. Maybe a 1-year-old would know a cat and a dog. But a computer wouldn't. So you have to feed like loads and loads, like thousands and thousands of pictures of a cat and a dog, and then differentiate it. And the machine would be able to eventually differentiate between the two animals. So these are the basic concepts that we learned in that machine learning class that made me realize how difficult it is to imitate natural intelligence into machinery to create this artificial intelligence. It was a really nice class to realize how peculiar and how detailed these things are, to be able to get it to perfection, and then at the end of the day, it's still not perfect. There still may be errors with your models.

This is one of HCC's first four-year programs. And it's also a program that is first-of-its-kind in Texas. Do you feel like this program is high-quality enough to be at the forefront of AI education, like HCC leaders hope?

Definitely. When it comes to the kind of education that we're getting and the kind of resources that we're getting, I would say definitely. This is something that it's not going to go away anytime soon. If anything, it's only going to get more broad and wide. This is something that deserves to be at the forefront of education, and people need to know about these programs that are being offered. It's only a couple of schools that are offering it.

I've enjoyed my experience so far, and I'm so grateful that I chose something like that. ... I definitely had a very unique college experience, especially going to a community college. I feel like I'm very blessed. It definitely feels very revolutionary and innovative. It doesn't feel like a regular experience.

How do you think you'll be using this degree post-graduation?

This field is still very new. For example, if someone is pursuing a computer science degree, they can always go ahead and apply for software positions. When it comes to AI, there's no specific title that you can look up when applying.

The thing with AI is that you can literally apply it to any field that you like. I like marketing, I like healthcare. So I would like to go for some field where I can make an amalgam of these two things. I'm still very nervous about what kind of job I can get, especially the job market that we currently have. ... I think I might go for something like a data analyst or a machine learning specialist, because these are my favorite two classes I've taken so far, and the classes I've learned the most from.

Miranda covers Houston's community colleges in partnership with Open Campus. Despite roughly half of Houston's higher-education students attending community colleges, there hasn't been much news covering these systems or students — until now. Her reporting holds institutions accountable, highlights barriers faced by students and helps them navigate their opportunities. Reach Miranda at or on Twitter and Instagram .