TRENDS
Taking AI to
the Humanities
Universities take a multidisciplinary approach
to shaping tomorrow’s AI leaders.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
When MIT’s new College of
Computing starts this fall, it
won’t be comprised of just
computer science students.
Instead, the Stephen A. Schwarzman College
of Computing will target what MIT President
Leo Rafael Reif calls bilinguals—students
who will learn to use artificial intelligence
to address challenges in areas like political
science, economics, linguistics, anthropology,
and urban studies.
The billion-dollar investment is a big deal,
but not just because it’s one of the largest
monetary bets on the application and ethics
of computing and AI by an American academic
institution. Or, for that matter, because of the
initial $350 million foundational gift from Stephen
A. Schwarzman, the chairman, CEO, and
co-founder of Blackstone, a leading private
equity firm.
What makes the new college stand out is its
ambitious mission: It will reorient MIT to bring
the power of computing and AI to all fields of
study. In turn, it will shape the future of computing
and AI, molded by insights from many
disciplines, including the humanities. In Reif’s
words: “We are reshaping MIT.”
MEETING GEN Z NEEDS
The new college, MIT’s president shared, is
the school’s “strategic response to a global
phenomenon—the ubiquity of computing and
the rise of AI.” Yet for Reif, computing is no
longer the domain of experts alone.
“It’s everywhere, and it needs to be understood
and mastered by almost everyone,” he
BY PRAGATI VERMA
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