Netflix chairman and co-founder Reed Hastings has donated $50 million to launch the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity at Bowdoin College in Maine at a time when artificial intelligence continues to be a hot-button issue.
The largest gift in the college’s 231-year history will be “a step forward in Bowdoin’s growing engagement in this breakthrough technology and ensure that students graduate well-prepared to lead in a world reshaped by AI,” it said. “Funding and fellowships will allow current and new faculty to explore the pedagogical and scholarship opportunities – and challenges – generated by the vast AI revolution.”
Initial priorities include hiring 10 new faculty members in a range of disciplines; supporting current faculty who want to incorporate and interrogate AI in their teaching, research, and other work; and conversations about the uses of AI and the changes and challenges it will bring, including workshops, symposia, and support for student research.
“This donation seeks to advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating wisdom for the common good by deepening the college’s engagement with one of humanity’s most transformative developments: artificial intelligence,” said Hastings, who followed his graduation from Bowdoin in 1983 by earning his MSc in artificial intelligence at Stanford University. “Just as Bowdoin’s mission emphasizes the formation of complete individuals who can navigate a world in flux, this initiative will empower students and faculty to critically examine, thoughtfully utilize, and ethically shape AI’s trajectory.”
Bowdoin president Safa Zaki, whose research focuses on building and testing computational models of mind, emphasized that a world recast by AI needs an infusion of humanity. “Bowdoin is ideally positioned to meet the challenges and opportunities of AI,” she said. “Our deep commitment to the liberal arts and the common good position us to think together about what we are going to value in human cognition, and what we will want our AI systems to do – or not do – going forward in service to humanity.”
Concluded Zaki: “Ethics, human values, and human understanding inform the technological progress, scientific advancements, and new norms that will emerge from this revolution.”
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