New Delhi (CNN Business)Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire founder of investment firm Blackstone (BX), has given the University of Oxford its largest single donation in hundreds of years to help fund research into the ethics of artificial intelligence. The £150 million ($188 million) contribution will fund an academic institute bearing the investor's name, the British university announced Wednesday. The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities will bring together all of Oxford's humanities programs under one roof -- including English, history, linguistics, philosophy and theology and religion. It will also house a new Institute for Ethics in AI, which will focus on studying the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and other new technology. The institute is expected to open by 2024.

Is it acceptable for a driverless car to deliberately swerve in a way that saves its own passengers yet kills a pedestrian? That and other ethical dilemmas related to artificial intelligence will be put under the microscope by Kiwi researchers receiving $400,000 in funding from the charitable Law Foundation trust. With AI technology set to increasingly transform transport, crime prevention and other areas the Otago University research aims to inform public policy over three years. "New technologies are rapidly transforming the way we live and work, and (this funding) will help ensure that New Zealand's law and policy keeps up with the pace of change," Law Foundation executive director Lynda Hagen said. Research project leader Colin Gavaghan said the legal, practical and ethical challenges posed by AI technologies, which learn and adapt for themselves, fascinated him.