MIT announces $1 billion artificial intelligence and computing initiative

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced a $1 billion commitment to computing and artificial intelligence that will see the size of its faculty in these fields near double, based on a $350m gift from Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive and co-founder of the global private equity group Blackstone. MIT said the initiative would be the largest investment in computing and AI ever made by an American university, and its biggest structural change since the 1950s when academics at MIT started pioneering research into AI. A “signature new building” on MIT’s Cambridge campus outside Boston (MA), to be completed by 2022, will house the Schwarzman College of Computing. Fifty faculty positions will be created, which will, in turn, lead to a larger influx of graduate researchers.