The Netflix Reed Hastings co-founder wants more researchers and students ask deep questions about artificial intelligence and its potential to overturn human standards.
To this end, Hastings gave $ 50 million to Bowdain College, his Alma Mater, to create a research initiative on “Ai and Humanity” – the greatest gift for the liberal arts college in Maine from its foundation in 1794, the school announced on Monday.
The purpose of the program, said Hastings and school officials, is to make Bowdain a mecca to study the risks and consequences of the AI, the initiative also aims to help students facing emerging technologies capable of producing human texts and even producing formulas for potential new drug compounds.
The idea for the program was born from the discussions in recent months between Hastings and the president of Bowdain, Safa R. Zaki, cognitive scientist, said. Bowdain plans to use part of the money to hire 10 members of the faculty and to support the professors “who want to incorporate and interrogate the IA” in their teaching and research.
In an interview, Hastings said that it was urgent for multiple researchers to face these questions due to the speed of the AI progress and the significant interruptions that systems could lead to human efforts such as work and relationships.
“We will fight for the survival of humanity and the prosperity of humanity,” said Hastings. He compared artificial intelligence with social networks, observing that social networks had grown up so quickly that few people initially understood the changes that could lead to interactions and human behavior.
“The change of artificial intelligence, I think, will be much larger than the change of social networks,” added Hastings. “So it is important to start early before we are overwhelmed by problems.”
Dr. Zaki claimed to hope that members of the Bowdain faculty and the students would have studied fundamental questions about artificial intelligence and that they devised ethical paintings for their use.
“What does it mean to have a technology that consumes so much power? What does it mean to have a technology that can expand inequalities in society?” Dr. Zaki asked. “We have a moral imperative, as educators, to take it, to face the IA”
Hundreds of millions of people have started to use artificial intelligence for activities such as the search for information, the production of E -mail and the generation of IT code. The developers of these tools say that even more powerful artificial intelligence systems are ready to radically alter the daily life.
Some important leaders of Silicon Valley have promoted rosy visions of a future led by the AI.
Bowdain’s new initiative, in which Hastings obtained a degree in 1983, aims to study more concretely such as IA could alter society, for better or for worse. Hastings claimed to hope that the new program would also contribute to ensuring that the development of technology served and benefited from people.
“I am an extreme techno-optimist and displays most of human progress while technology progresses on the one hand and moral systems on the other side,” he said. “Technological progress is going very well. Our improvements in the moral-ethical system need a little suspension.”