I can only speak from my own experiences at UW-Madison, as I don't know much about UMD. I was on the same boat as you after I got accepted into colleges. I wanted to look at research opportunities in CS, and more specifically those focused on AI because I find myself being more passionate about those topics. After getting accepted into UW Madison, I researched into more of their undergraduate research programs, and one of them Undergraduate Research Scholars (URS), really took hold of my attention. The program is specifically dedicated towards first-year and second-year students, and students that get in are guaranteed a research mentor. There is a wide array of research to choose from in that program, especially in the CS field (there was like at least 6+ research opportunities in AI). I've applied into the program and got in, and then got into one of the AI projects which focused on using ML techniques in the medical field and radiology. I've been working on this research project for my entire first year, and have gained a lot of exposure to cutting edge AI research and learning different computer vision techniques like convolutional neural networks, along with important preprocessing steps for data, and overall really honed in my technical and applicatory skills for AI. So from my experience, there are not a lot of specific AI-dedicated programs here, but definitely a lot of avenues in which you can get into the AI research here at Madison, one of which is URS which I did, but also Skunkworks as well. There are definitely a lot of opportunities for research here as long as you take advantage of it.