Schools
MIT To Invest $1B In New Artificial Intelligence College
In a letter to the community MIT president said the college is needed to study A.I.
CAMBRIDGE, MA — It might not be the Jetsons future you (or your parents) imagined it would be with robots and hover cars everywhere, but the robots and artificial intelligence are here. Now, MIT plans to add a $1 billion college centered around the study of it. The school has already raised some $650 million to that end.
The MIT Corporation and its executive committee approved the establishment of a new college, the president of the college, L. Rafael Reif, said in an email to the community this week.
The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will be the biggest change to MIT since the early 1950s, according to the president. The restructuring will include a new building, a new dean and a near doubling of its academic capability in computing and especially A.I., with 50 new faculty positions located within the College and jointly with departments across MIT.
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"This new College is our strategic response to a global phenomenon — the ubiquity of computing and the rise of AI. In this new world, we are building on MIT’s established leadership in these fields to position the Institute for decades to come as a world hub of education, research and innovation, and to prepare our students to lead in every domain," said Reif.
The plan comes in response to increased interest at the school, especially during the past year.
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MIT said it hopes the school will foster breakthroughs in computing, particularly artificial intelligence — actively informed by the wisdom of other disciplines; deliver the power of AI tools to researchers; and advance pioneering work on AI’s ethical use and societal impact.
The university plans to integrate the school's curricula and degree programs into nearly every field to equip students "to be as fluent in computing and AI as they are in their own disciplines and ready to use these digital tools wisely and humanely to help make a better world," according to the president's letter.
Bring on the robots.
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