Netflix co-founder and govt chairman Reed Hastings has given $50 million to his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Maine, in help of a brand new initiative centered on AI.
The present, which is the biggest in Bowdoin’s historical past, will allow the varsity to rent 10 new school members in a spread of disciplines. It would assist present school members wanting to include AI of their educating, analysis, and creative work and in addition help conversations about AI’s makes use of and challenges, together with workshops, symposia, and help for scholar analysis.
“This donation seeks to advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating knowledge for the widespread good by deepening the faculty’s engagement with one among humanity’s most transformative developments: synthetic intelligence,” Hastings mentioned in a press launch. “We intention to develop leaders who could be ‘at dwelling’ in each the current and future technological panorama.”
Hastings graduated from Bowdoin in 1983 and went on to earn a Grasp’s diploma in synthetic intelligence from Stanford earlier than embarking on his profession in expertise. Netflix was based in 1997. Hastings stepped down as Co-CEO of Netflix in 2023.
Bowdoin president Safa Zaki, whose analysis focuses on constructing and testing computational fashions of thoughts, mentioned the present from Hastings will assist the faculty infuse humanity into the research and software of AI. “Bowdoin is ideally positioned to satisfy the challenges and alternatives of AI,” she mentioned. “Our deep dedication to the liberal arts and the widespread good place us to assume collectively about what we’re going to worth in human cognition, and what we are going to need our AI programs to do – or not do – going ahead in service to humanity.”
In an interview with the New York Occasions, Hastings mentioned he stays optimistic concerning the optimistic impression AI can have, however the intention of the present is to bolster the research of all the implications of the expertise.
“I’m an excessive techno-optimist and think about most of human progress as expertise progress on one aspect and moral-ethical programs on the opposite aspect,” Hastings mentioned. “The tech progress is transferring forward very properly. Our moral-ethical system enhancements want some bolstering.”
