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MIT Plans College For AI, Backed by $1 Billion (nytimes.com)
Every major university is wrestling with how to adapt to the technology wave of artificial intelligence -- how to prepare students not only to harness the powerful tools of A.I., but also to thoughtfully weigh its ethical and social implications. A.I. courses, conferences and joint majors have proliferated in the last few years. But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is taking a particularly ambitious step, creating a new college backed by a planned investment of $1 billion. Two-thirds of the funds have already been raised, M.I.T. said, in announcing the initiative on Monday. From a report: The linchpin gift of $350 million came from Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, the big private equity firm. The college, called the M.I.T. Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, will create 50 new faculty positions and many more fellowships for graduate students. It is scheduled to begin in the fall semester next year, housed in other buildings before moving into its own new space in 2022. The goal of the college, said L. Rafael Reif, the president of M.I.T., is to "educate the bilinguals of the future." He defines bilinguals as people in fields like biology, chemistry, politics, history and linguistics who are also skilled in the techniques of modern computing that can be applied to them. But, he said, "to educate bilinguals, we have to create a new structure."
Okay class, let's go around and introduce ourselves -
"Hi, I'm Siri let me look that up on Google"
"Hello, I'm Alexa would you like me to turn your lights on?"
"My name is WOPR - would you like to play a game?"
"Good Morning class, my name is HAL, I'm very excited for the semester"
"My name is Skynet, I'm looking to take over the world when I graduate!"
It's not a school for AI, it's a school for "bilinguals," with a focus on technology.
Cue the people that only read the headline..... now!
The college bubble is going to burst, and soon.
College is a waste of time and money for many people. But those people don't go to MIT.
. . . for humans.
Also, people like to say feel good things like you dont need a degree for programming, but 90% of programming is embedded and you do need a degree for that. The only programming you dont need a degree for is unity and other "app builders" jobs that pay shit.
College is a waste of time and money for many people. But those people don't go to MIT.
Nope, they go to Harvard, Yale, or other Ivys where legacies or kids with rich parents can get in no matter how inept they are, get an easy degree handed to them, then go on and either go into the family business or "start their own business" with millions of dollars of their parents' money and using their parents connections.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
50 employees
No. 50 faculty. Add in staff, grad students (who are paid), and postdocs, and you have at least 200 people.
The billion bucks is an endowment, so they can only spend the gains, not the principle. If the return is 4% and they leave 2% in the endowment to compensate for inflation, that is $20M annually, or about $100K per paid position. That is very low once you consider overhead and benefits. Grad students and postdocs aren't paid much, but they will almost certainly need more donations or funding to keep it going.
I absolutely hate it! AI is causing jobs to disappear and making interactions far more impersonal.
I don't really see it in any product I use? What is products do companies make money from?
RNNs are used in NLP applications, such as grammar checkers. But I can see that you are not familiar with those.
If (person_bought(amazon_fire_tv))
{
suggest(amazon_fire_tv)
suggest(other_crap)
}
Brilliant AI.
Just sayin'. Not accusing anyone of anything legally.
-Styopa
College Board: We heard that the BioEngineering field is really growing, we should have a program?
College President: Great, we lead the world here at UofAwesome. What's Bioengineering?
Dean: I don't know, but it sounds trendy, maybe we can get lot's of students to signup for a trendy sounding course.
Profs: What's Bioengineering?
Dean: Just Google it and create a 4-year program. It'll be amazing, I have total faith in you!
Graduating BioEngineers: We can't find jobs in this new trendy field.
Just like BE, AI is going to be the next bubble when everyone realizes the limitations of the current implementation. And... if you don't believe me, just as Siri or Alexa, they can help you understand the limitations.
"Every major university is wrestling with how to adapt to the technology wave of artificial intelligence -- how to prepare students not only to harness the powerful tools of A.I., but also to thoughtfully weigh its ethical and social implications."
Given that the so-called social "sciences" are motived primarily by ideology and less so by a quest for truth, I suspect that the primary purpose of the effort is to "educate" young professionals entering the AI field in their "social responsibilities."
"start their own business" with millions of dollars of their parents' money
And then act like they are some sort of business genius
Now if we can get many more universities having major A1 facilities we just might have aa chance of getting ahead of other nations. Build more and build them better !
There will be an opaque admissions process run by gnomes accountable to nothing and no one, with rules so arbitrary and politics-driven that Admissions will be one part of AI College that will have to be staffed by humans.
-AIs that have never worked very well but which have colorful, checkered implementation histories will get preference. An AI which was developed to spread ransomeware but which promises to turn its life around is a surefire admission. Some sample guidelines:
-AIs that reply with a female voice will be preferred over those using a male voice, but being able to switch among a number of hard-to-classify androgynous voices will be considered better still.
-AIs developed by Asians will not be admitted unless the developers are really big donors and only if they don't play an instrument.
-An AI that was developed by the same team as a previously admitted AI will be admitted even if mediocre.
Couldn't possibly happen. Somebody would call them on it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
College is a waste of time and money for many people. But those people don't go to MIT.
Nope, they go to Harvard, Yale, or other Ivys where legacies or kids with rich parents can get in no matter how inept they are, get an easy degree handed to them, then go on and either go into the family business or "start their own business" with millions of dollars of their parents' money and using their parents connections.
And it's for people who like beer.