Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has donated $50 million to Bowdoin School to fund synthetic intelligence initiatives, the Maine-based faculty introduced Monday.
“This donation seeks to advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating knowledge for the widespread good by deepening the School’s engagement with one among humanity’s most transformative developments: synthetic intelligence,” Hastings stated in an announcement.
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Hastings, 64, graduated from Bowdoin with a level in arithmetic in 1983. He then earned a grasp’s diploma in synthetic intelligence in 1988 at Stanford College.
The New York Instances studies the donation is the largest reward the varsity has acquired because it was based in 1794.
The cash will assist rent 10 new college members and assist a spread of AI studying investments, together with growing and incorporating new curricula, internet hosting occasions, and working workshops on synthetic intelligence and the way it will have an effect on “the way forward for humanity.”
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Bowdoin President Safa Zaki stated that as AI advances, it will likely be essential to ask questions like what we “worth in human cognition” and what we “need our AI techniques to do — or not do — in service to humanity.”
Hastings warned that the time to start out asking these questions is now.
“We will be preventing for the survival of humanity and the flourishing of humanity,” Hastings informed the New York Instances.
“The AI change, I feel, might be a lot greater than the social networking change,” Hastings added. “So it is essential to get began early earlier than we’re overwhelmed by the issues.”
Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997 and spent 25 years as CEO. He’s nonetheless on the firm, serving as govt chairman, and has a internet price of round $6.61 billion, per Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
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