Posts in the Global AI and CS Course Maps series
This map audits AI and CS courses at Stanford, CMU, MIT, and UC Berkeley in 2025–2026 using four access labels: A0 for a visible catalog entry, A1 for a public syllabus, A2 for partial materials, and A3 for a self-study-ready package. A course site or YouTube playlist can exist without giving outsiders access to the current videos, assignments, or starter code.
Stanford CS rests on CS103, CS107, CS109, CS111, and CS161; CS221 names three of those plus CS106B as preparation. This guide combines official prerequisites with an explicitly editorial reading order and marks public-material and offering risks.
CMU's current BSAI now runs through 07-280 and 07-380 before branching into an NLP/vision core and four AI clusters, but 07-380 does not debut until Fall 2026. The residual Spring 2026 materials for 07-280 and the complete 10-301/601 site already support self-study; retired 15-281 remains a useful legacy route.
MIT has offered Course 6-4, a formal BS in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making, since 2022. For an outside learner, however, the current degree requirements, the 2025–2026 course sites, and the best OCW editions rarely line up. A workable route follows 6-4's programming, algorithms, linear algebra, and probability foundation, then selects among 6.S191, 6.3900, 6.4110, 6.7960, vision, and robotics according to what is actually public.
Berkeley has no standalone undergraduate AI degree. A workable path builds on the CS BA or EECS BS foundation, enters through either CS188's broad AI curriculum or CS189's mathematical machine learning curriculum, then branches into deep learning, NLP, vision, or reinforcement learning. Many 2025–2026 courses are A3, but the newest class, the newest stable URL, and the best self-study edition are not always the same.
CS50 AI is Harvard's most complete public entry point, but the Summer 2026 course still uses 2020 recordings and assignment assets while the rolling OCW projects have moved to other editions. CS181 Spring 2026 exposes current homework and notes without current recordings; CS182 Fall 2026 has not yet completed an offering.