When you think of leaders in artificial intelligence, you probably picture sneaker-wearing, baby-faced Silicon Valley-types like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman. But one of the the biggest funders of AI is 77-year-old Blackstone CEO and Republican megadonor Steve Schwarzman - who says his favorite app is'email.' Schwarzman, who was still using a basic flip phone at the time, became enamored with AI in 2015, when the co-founder of Alibaba told him that AI is the wave of the future and would change job functions, drug development and education. Since then, Schwarzman has invested more than 500 million dollars in the advancement of AI and has donated millions of dollars to Yale University to establish a center for AI advancements and to create the University of Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI. Steve Schwarzman had a brief stint in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1970 before he headed to Harvard Business School In the midst of concerns over an AI takeover, Schwarzman, who is worth 37.8 billion, is now working to promote AI and reassure the public that the technology is meant to assist with daily tasks, not to replace humans.

One of Wall Street's largest private equity firms, the Blackstone Group, has been making a series of moves that have left mainstream analysts puzzled, with the most recent being Blackstone's hire of David Urban, a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Trump administration. Blackstone's courting of a Trump ally was not surprising given that the firm's CEO, Steven Schwarzman, recently donated $3 million to Trump's re-election efforts and had previously chaired the President's now-defunct Strategic and Policy Forum of "business leaders" and advisors. The close ties that have developed between Schwarzman and Trump following the latter's election in late 2016 have led mainstream media to describe Schwarzman as a confidant of the President. However, what was odd about Blackstone's hiring of David Urban was its murky reason for doing so, as the firm plans to task Urban with lobbying the Pentagon and State Department on "issues related to military preparedness and training." This is odd, as CNBC noted, because Blackstone "doesn't have any publicly listed government contracts, and its known investments don't appear to have direct links to the defense industry."

I am not an engineer. But I am someone who has spent years looking at companies and industries to see which are poised for growth and which are on the decline. And one thing I see every day is that most companies and industries are about to be transformed, if they haven't been already, by artificial intelligence. AI will reshape the world in ways we can't imagine, much as the printing press and the Internet did at their inceptions. That means the United States must remain the lead player in AI if we are to guarantee our future in a competitive global economy.

Macau casinos have been rolling out artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in order to monitor habits of patrons and quickly identify those individuals who are likely to spend, and lose, big. The eyes in the skies of Macau casinos are upgrading their capabilities with artificial intelligence. Make no mistake, the AI implementations aren't tailored to protect gamblers. Instead, the technology is to aid the casino in pinpointing its VIPs and making sure they're being catered to. Bloomberg journalist Jinshan Hong says Las Vegas Sands and MGM Resorts' Macau casinos have already installed such monitoring equipment. Hong reports that hidden cameras use facial recognition technologies to identify guests, and digitally-enabled poker chips and baccarat tables allow the house to keep close tabs on guests.

This week, Oxford University announced that American billionaire and philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarzman had gifted the university with its largest cash donation ever--£150 million--to fund (among other things) an institution to investigate the ethics of artificial intelligence. Mr. Schwarzman said that universities need to serve as advisers on the ethics of artificial intelligence and technological advances. While it is certainly true that the technology has moved rapidly ahead of the legislation that patrols it, this is hardly the first time people have thought about the ethics of AI. As any sci-fi buff will tell you, we have been mulling over the ethical ramifications of technologies we didn't possess for a century. What they might not know, however, is that people have been thinking about the potentials and pitfalls of the robot world for thousands of years.

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.

LONDON - An American billionaire has given Oxford University £150 million ($188.6 million) for a new institute that will study the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and its vast potential to change society as we know it. The donation from Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone, will also fund a center to house all of the university's humanities subjects in a single space to encourage collaborative study. The idea is to bring together those working on projects that make life worth living with those trying to make sure that the technology of the future works for the interest of society. "AI can be an enormous force for good," Schwarzman told The Associated Press. "But on the downside it can lead to high unemployment. It could destabilize society if it happens too fast."

Tuesday's announcement that Stephen Schwarzman, a US private equity billionaire, donated £150 million ($189 million) to Oxford University is the latest in a growing philanthropic movement to keep artificial intelligence (AI) in check. The Stephen A Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities will incorporate a library, a concert hall, an auditorium and, most importantly, an Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence. "Technology can't be allowed to just do whatever it wants because it can," the CEO of Blackstone said in response to his donation. But he is not the only one concerned. Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, set up Luminate last year to advocate for civic empowerment, data and digital rights, financial transparency, and independent media.

The University of Oxford has said it is to receive its biggest single direct donation "since the Renaissance", after it unveiled a £150m gift from the US billionaire Stephen Schwarzman to fund humanities research and tackle looming social issues linked to artificial intelligence. The money will be used to create the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, bringing together disciplines including English, philosophy, music and history in a single hub with performing spaces and a library, alongside a new Institute for Ethics in AI to collaborate. Unlike previous mega-donors, Schwarzman, the founder and chief executive of the Blackstone financial group, is not a former student. He says he was attracted to make the donation after being approached by Louise Richardson, Oxford's vice-chancellor, and by his memories of visiting as a teenager in 1963. "I visited Oxford as a 15-year-old on what we used to call'teen tours' in the US, where you travelled around Europe and hopefully became more civilised. I vividly remember going to Oxford because I'd never seen anything like it," Schwarzman said.

MIT is putting $1 billion into studies of computing and artificial intelligence in an effort to address global opportunities and challenges in one of the largest structural changes the school has made since 1950. The university will create a new school dedicated to computation computer sciences to be offered for a number of fields including business, government, academia and journalism. "It is a really big deal. Students will be able to experience on campus new computational tools and these new abilities transform academics on campus with every study," said Marty Schmidt, MIT presidential provost. The new efforts will touch every field of study, combining other degrees with computer science to make sure students can study what they want while preparing them as best as possible for the changing world.