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Computing and artificial intelligence: Humanistic perspectives from MIT

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The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC) will reorient the Institute to bring the power of computing and artificial intelligence to all fields at MIT, and to allow the future of computing and AI to be shaped by all MIT disciplines. To support ongoing planning for the new college, Dean Melissa Nobles invited faculty from all 14 of MIT's humanistic disciplines in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences to respond to two questions: As Nobles says in her foreword to the series, "Together, the following responses to these two questions offer something of a guidebook to the myriad, productive ways that technical, humanistic, and scientific fields can join forces at MIT, and elsewhere, to further human and planetary well-being." The following excerpts highlight faculty responses, with links to full commentaries. The excerpts are sequenced by fields in the following order: the humanities, arts, and social sciences. "The advent of artificial intelligence presents our species with an historic opportunity -- disguised as an existential challenge: Can we stay human in the age of AI? In fact, can we grow in humanity, can we shape a more humane, more just, and sustainable world? With a sense of promise and urgency, we are embarked at MIT on an accelerated effort to more fully integrate the technical and humanistic forms of discovery in our curriculum and research, and in our habits of mind and action."


Computing and artificial intelligence: Humanistic perspectives from MIT

#artificialintelligence

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC) will reorient the Institute to bring the power of computing and artificial intelligence to all fields at MIT, and to allow the future of computing and AI to be shaped by all MIT disciplines. To support ongoing planning for the new college, Dean Melissa Nobles invited faculty from all 14 of MIT's humanistic disciplines in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences to respond to two questions: As Nobles says in her foreword to the series, "Together, the following responses to these two questions offer something of a guidebook to the myriad, productive ways that technical, humanistic, and scientific fields can join forces at MIT, and elsewhere, to further human and planetary well-being." The following excerpts highlight faculty responses, with links to full commentaries. The excerpts are sequenced by fields in the following order: the humanities, arts, and social sciences. "The advent of artificial intelligence presents our species with an historic opportunity -- disguised as an existential challenge: Can we stay human in the age of AI? In fact, can we grow in humanity, can we shape a more humane, more just, and sustainable world? With a sense of promise and urgency, we are embarked at MIT on an accelerated effort to more fully integrate the technical and humanistic forms of discovery in our curriculum and research, and in our habits of mind and action."


Computing and artificial intelligence: Humanistic perspectives from MIT

#artificialintelligence

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC) will reorient the Institute to bring the power of computing and artificial intelligence to all fields at MIT, and to allow the future of computing and AI to be shaped by all MIT disciplines. To support ongoing planning for the new college, Dean Melissa Nobles invited faculty from all 14 of MIT's humanistic disciplines in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences to respond to two questions: As Nobles says in her foreword to the series, "Together, the following responses to these two questions offer something of a guidebook to the myriad, productive ways that technical, humanistic, and scientific fields can join forces at MIT, and elsewhere, to further human and planetary well-being." The following excerpts highlight faculty responses, with links to full commentaries. The excerpts are sequenced by fields in the following order: the humanities, arts, and social sciences. "The advent of artificial intelligence presents our species with an historic opportunity -- disguised as an existential challenge: Can we stay human in the age of AI? In fact, can we grow in humanity, can we shape a more humane, more just, and sustainable world? With a sense of promise and urgency, we are embarked at MIT on an accelerated effort to more fully integrate the technical and humanistic forms of discovery in our curriculum and research, and in our habits of mind and action."


Could robots make us better humans?

The Guardian

As Marcus du Sautoy greets me at the entrance to New College, Oxford, his appearance is a quiet riot of colour. His clothes rather suggest someone who ran into White Stuff or Fat Face and frantically grabbed anything he could find – in this case, a salmon zip-up top, multihued check trousers and shoes that are a headache-inducing shade of turquoise. When we settle down to talk in a nearby meeting room, he repeatedly glances at a notepad – whose pages, just to add to all the garishness, are a bold shade of yellow. They are full of what look like scrawled equations, mixed with odd-looking shapes: the raw material, he explains, of a project involving very complicated geometry. "There's an infinite symmetrical structure that I'm looking at," he says, "and I think the top bit of it will tell me everything that's going on inside it. It's almost like an infinite lake, and I should be able to know everything that's happening in it by looking at the first centimetre."


There's no such thing as a "tech person" in the age of AI

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When I was an undergrad at MIT, and later an engineer in Silicon Valley, I always felt like a bit of a black sheep because of my perpetual desire to straddle technology and the humanities. That went against the culture of both worlds, indicative of a broader impulse globally to separate the two. In hindsight, this separation hasn't served us so well. As Henry Kissinger wrote in the June 2018 issue of the Atlantic: "The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology in search of a guiding philosophy."


AI Weekly: For evidence of academic investment in AI, look no further than Pittsburgh

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced this week that it would invest $1 billion in a new college of computer engineering: the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. And when the new building hosts its first classes in 2022, it'll be the largest structural addition to MIT's campus since the 1950s. Yet another AI-forward institution of note is Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), which partnered with Bosch's Center for Artificial Intelligence on an $8 million research project that goes through 2023. CMU has the additional distinction of being the first university to offer an undergraduate degree in AI, and it neighbors the ARM Institute, a $250 million initiative focused on accelerating the advancement of transformative robotics technologies and education in the U.S. manufacturing industry. This week, I participated in a tour of startups in Pittsburgh's blossoming robotics and automation industry, the majority of which draw on CMU not just for funding, but for expertise.


MIT unveils new $1 bn college for artificial intelligence

Daily Mail - Science & tech

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced plans to create a new college for the development of artificial intelligence. The university said it would add 50 new faculty members and create an interdisciplinary hub for work in computer science, AI, data science, and related fields. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced plans to create a new college for the development of artificial intelligence. A large part of the new funds will come from a gift from Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of financial giant Blackstone, after whom the new college will be named. 'As computing reshapes our world, MIT intends to help make sure it does so for the good of all,' said MIT President Rafael Reif.


MIT unveils new $1 bn college for artificial intelligence

#artificialintelligence

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced plans Monday to create a new college of artificial intelligence with an initial $1 billion commitment for the program focusing on "responsible and ethical" uses of the technology. The prestigious university said it would add 50 new faculty members and create an interdisciplinary hub for work in computer science, AI, data science, and related fields. A large part of the new funds will come from a gift from Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of the financial giant Blackstone, after whom the new college will be named. "As computing reshapes our world, MIT intends to help make sure it does so for the good of all," said MIT President Rafael Reif. An MIT statement said the initiative represents the single largest investment in computing and AI by an American academic institution.


MIT is building a billion-dollar college dedicated to AI

#artificialintelligence

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is adding a new college of artificial intelligence, but it's not just meant for those with a coding background. The new college will focus on interdisciplinary AI education, training those studying biology, chemistry, history, and linguistics in the ability to use artificial intelligence in their own field, MIT president Leo Rafael Reif told The New York Times today (Oct. AI ethics will also be a part of the curriculum. When fund-raising is complete, the college fund will total $1 billion for new faculty and its own space on campus. So far two-thirds of the investment have been secured, half from private-equity firm Blackstone's CEO Stephen Schwarzman.


MIT is investing $1 billion in an AI college

#artificialintelligence

Ever since the beginning of the AI boom in the early 2010s, there's been a corresponding drought in talented AI developers and researchers. The way to fix this is to educate more of them, and today, MIT announced a $1 billion initiative to do exactly that: it will establish a new college of computing to train the next generation of machine learning mavens. Instead, it will focus on what MIT president L. Rafael Reif calls "the bilinguals of the future." By that, he means students in fields like biology, chemistry, physics, politics, history, and linguistics who also know how to apply machine learning to these disciplines. Two-thirds of the planned $1 billion commitment has been raised so far, with $350 million coming from Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone.