M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1 Billion

By Steve Lohr

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Every major university is wrestling with how to adapt to the technology wave of artificial intelligence — how to prepare students not only to harness the powerful tools of A.I., but also to thoughtfully weigh its ethical and social implications. A.I. courses, conferences and joint majors have proliferated in the last few years. But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is taking a particularly ambitious step, creating a new college backed by a planned investment of $1 billion. Two-thirds of the funds have already been raised, M.I.T. said, in announcing the initiative on Monday. The linchpin gift of $350 million came from Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, the big private equity firm. The college, called the M.I.T. Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, will create 50 new faculty positions and many more fellowships for graduate students.

It is scheduled to begin in the fall semester next year, housed in other buildings before moving into its own new space in 2022.

The goal of the college, said L. Rafael Reif, the president of M.I.T., is to “educate the bilinguals of the future.” He defines bilinguals as people in fields like biology, chemistry, politics, history and linguistics who are also skilled in the techniques of modern computing that can be applied to them.

But, he said, “to educate bilinguals, we have to create a new structure.”

Academic departments still tend to be silos, Mr. Reif explained, despite interdisciplinary programs that cross the departmental boundaries. Half the 50 faculty positions will focus on advancing computer science, and the other half will be jointly appointed by the college and by other departments across M.I.T.

Traditionally, departments hold sway in hiring and tenure decisions at universities. So, for example, a researcher who applied A.I.-based text analysis tools in a field like history might be regarded as too much a computer scientist by the humanities department and not sufficiently technical by the computer science department.

M.I.T.’s leaders hope the new college will alter traditional academic thinking and practice.

“We need to rewire how we hire and promote faculty,” said Martin Schmidt, the provost of M.I.T.

Today, most dual-major programs involve taking courses in a computer science department in machine learning or data science in addition to a student’s major. The M.I.T. college is an effort to have computing baked into the curriculum rather than stapled on. It will grant degrees, though what they will be or their names have not been determined.

That appealed to Melissa Nobles, dean of M.I.T.’s School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, who said she saw the new college as helping non-computer scientists bring A.I. tools to their fields — “to what they really care about.”

The college, Ms. Nobles said, offers the possibility of a renewal for humanities studies at M.I.T., where students flock to computer science and engineering.

“We’re excited by the possibilities,” she said. “That’s how the humanities are going to survive, not by running from the future but by embracing it.”

ImageStephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, has given $350 million for the new college, to be called the M.I.T. Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing.CreditShannon Stapleton/Reuters

Donors, like students, are attracted more to computer science programs than to many other disciplines. But the new college at M.I.T. is designed to spread the wealth.

“It’s a major fund-raising mechanism that gives M.I.T. a huge resource to apply A.I. to other fields,” said Eric Schmidt, who was the executive chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and is a visiting innovation fellow at M.I.T.

The college and its goals were shaped by a long-running conversation between Mr. Schwarzman, the principal donor, and Mr. Reif, the M.I.T. president. They first met in 2015 when Mr. Schwarzman was setting up the Schwarzman Scholars program, which awards scholarships for young people to gain a greater understanding of China.

At the time, Mr. Schwarzman was becoming increasingly fascinated by the debate over the opportunity and challenge presented by artificial intelligence. A lengthy conversation with Jack Ma, founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, piqued his interest, Mr. Schwarzman recalled, and he kept talking to experts and reading.

“I became convinced that this technology was so powerful it was really going to remake a lot of the world as we know it,” he said.

Over the next few years, Mr. Schwarzman and Mr. Reif picked up the conversation about the trajectory of A.I. and its broad impact, when their paths crossed in places like New York and Davos, Switzerland.

Over the past year, M.I.T.’s leaders and faculty were brainstorming to chart a course for the university’s future. The university had done individual initiatives in areas like the future of work and a research project on the human and machine intelligence.

But Mr. Schwarzman urged Mr. Reif to go further, emphasizing the ethical issues raised by automated decision-making in everything from medical diagnosis to self-driving cars. He also stressed the workplace impact.

“We really need to try to understand this technology, not just get hit by it,” Mr. Schwarzman said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Reif was also focused on making a universitywide impact. His persistent question: “How do I make sure these tools are used by everyone in every discipline?”

The new college structure was his answer. Mr. Schwarzman said he would be interested in contributing, and soon after, Mr. Reif made his pitch.

“Well, that is a big number,” Mr. Schwarzman said, recalling his initial reaction.

After further study, he said yes.

Mr. Schwarzman said he hoped that the M.I.T. move might trigger others to invest in America’s A.I. future, not just commercially. He points to the major push the Chinese government is making, and notes the fruits of United States government-funded research in the past — technologies that helped America take the global lead in industries from the personal computer to the internet.

“I think we’ve been lagging, for whatever reason,” Mr. Schwarzman said.

Correction: October 15, 2018

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the chief executive of the Blackstone Group. He is Stephen A. Schwarzman, not Steven. The error was repeated in a picture caption.