With October’s announcement of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, the Institute committed itself to a serious restructuring—the most profound since the early 1950s. As the pervasiveness of computing and the rise of AI are reshaping society as a whole, concerns about the societal impact and ethical use of these technologies are increasing as well. Indeed, the fact that other leading universities have begun to announce their own moves in this domain reinforces the importance of priming MIT to educate students for leadership in the computing-intensive future.
In this changing landscape, the MIT Schwarzman College stands out in several ways, starting with its transformative scale. This $1 billion effort, given immense momentum by the $350 million founding gift, represents the largest concerted investment in computing and AI by an American academic institution.
Just as important, MIT Schwarzman will function as a distinctively cross-cutting academic entity. Since the creation of MIT Sloan and the precursor of SHASS nearly 70 years ago, MIT has thrived with its five schools—academic neighbors with their own specialties that freely share ideas across disciplines. Yet the concept of the new college goes further. We are not merely adding 50 faculty; we are adding 25 faculty in computing fields and 25 with joint appointments in both the college and their respective disciplines. And while we expect the college to accelerate the adoption of AI tools in many other fields, it will also tap their wisdom to influence the future of computing.
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