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nhamann comments on Preface to a Proposal for a New Mode of Inquiry - Less Wrong
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It's been brought up in multiple comments already, but I also wanted to register my disapproval of this statement. The first four minutes of the first SICP video lecture has the best description of computer science that I've ever heard, so I quote:
"The reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments, and that is when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use...I think in the future, people will look back and say, "well yes, those primitives in the 20th century were fiddling around with these gadgets called 'computers,' but really what they were doing was starting to learn how to formalize intuitions about process: how to do things; starting to develop a way to talk precisely about 'how-to' knowledge, as opposed to geometry that talks about 'what is true.'" - Hal Abelson
That said, I'm looking forward to your upcoming posts.
Yet, OP has a point. In the course of getting a PhD in computer science, I had the requirement or opportunity to study computer hardware architecture, operating system design, compiler design, data structures, databases, graphics, and lots of different computer languages. And none of that stuff was ever relevant to AI - not one page of it. (Even the data structures and databases courses dealt only with data structures inappropriate for AI.) The courses I took in linguistics, neuroscience, mathematics, psychology, and even electrical engineering were all more useful.
Other than the specifically AI-oriented courses, I can recall only 2 computer science courses that turned out to be helpful for AI: Algorithm analysis, and computational complexity theory. And the AI courses always seemed out of place in the computer science department.
I would not recommend anyone interested in AI to major in computer science. Far too much time wasted on irrelevant subjects. It's difficult to say what they should major in - perhaps neuroscience, or math.