Tag: 50M

  • Bowdoin to Devote $50M Gift to AI Learning, Teaching

    Bowdoin to Devote $50M Gift to AI Learning, Teaching

    Bowdoin College has received a $50 million gift from Reed Hastings, 1983 alumnus, Netflix cofounder and Powder Mountain CEO, to create the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity.

    The gift, the largest in the college’s 231-year history, will be used largely to support teaching and research related to artificial intelligence. It will pay for 10 new faculty members, expand faculty-led research and curriculum offerings, and drive campuswide conversations about the benefits and challenges of AI.

    “This donation seeks to advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating wisdom for the common good by deepening the College’s engagement with one of humanity’s most transformative developments: artificial intelligence,” Hastings said in a press release. “As AI becomes smarter than humans, we are going to need some deep thinking to keep us flourishing.”

    Hastings credited a late Bowdoin mathematics professor, Steve Fisk, for first encouraging him to study AI. “Steve was about forty years too early, but his perspective was life-changing for me,” Hastings said.

    “We are thrilled and so grateful to receive this remarkable support from Reed, who shares our conviction that the AI revolution makes the liberal arts and a Bowdoin education more essential to society,” Bowdoin president Safa Zaki said in a statement.

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  • OpenAI invests $50M in higher ed research

    OpenAI invests $50M in higher ed research

    OpenAI announced Tuesday that it’s investing $50 million to start up NextGenAI, a new research consortium of 15 institutions that will be “dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education.”

    The consortium, which includes 13 universities, is designed to “catalyze progress at a rate faster than any one institution would alone,” the company said in a news release.

    “The field of AI wouldn’t be where it is today without decades of work in the academic community. Continued collaboration is essential to build AI that benefits everyone,” Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer of OpenAI, said in the news release. “NextGenAI will accelerate research progress and catalyze a new generation of institutions equipped to harness the transformative power of AI.”

    The company, which launched ChatGPT in late 2022, will give each of the consortium’s 15 institutions—including Boston Children’s Hospital and the Boston Public Library—millions in funding for research and access to computational resources as part of an effort “to support students, educators, and researchers advancing the frontiers of knowledge.” 

    Institutional initiatives supported by NextGenAI vary widely but will include projects focused on AI literacy, advancing medical research, expanding access to scholarly resources and enhancing teaching and learning. 

    The universities in the NextGenAI consortium are: 

    • California Institute of Technology
    • California State University system
    • Duke University
    • University of Georgia
    • Harvard University
    • Howard University
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • University of Michigan
    • University of Mississippi
    • Ohio State University
    • University of Oxford (U.K.)
    • Sciences Po (France)
    • Texas A&M University

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