MIT will create a new college with courses combining AI, machine learning, data science and other academic disciplines. With $1 billion in funding, it will be the largest financial investment in AI by any academic institution in the USA.
The new college will have 50 new teacher positions and many scholarships for postgraduate students. The college will open in September of 2019, initially starting in other buildings until 2022, where its new buildings will be ready.
Rafael Reif, president of MIT, said Whereas the new approach to student education was necessary because of the way in which computers and Artificial Intelligence (Vision Intelligence) “αναδιαμορφώνουν τον κόσμο”. Με τα νέα data already causing major shifts in political opinion and machine learning beginning to affect everything from employment to criminal sentencing, the new college will encourage students and researchers to think about the potential impact of computing and artificial intelligence on people.
Reif told The New York Times that the aim of the new college was to "educate the bilinguals of the future". It defines as bilingual scientists in fields such as biology, chemistry and political science who will also have expertise in the modern computational techniques applied to these courses of study.
Two-thirds of the college line has already been covered. For example, from the required amount of 1 billion dollars 350 million dollars come from Stephen A. Schwarzman, managing director and co-founder of Blackstone, a private equity firm.
In recent years, MIT has made many important commitments to the artificial intelligence. This year, the university announced a program called Quest for Intelligence, an initiative aimed at making breakthroughs in AI by bringing together neuroscience, cognitive science and computer researchers.
