MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Last updated
MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing
MIT Schwarzman College of Computing logo.svg
Type Private
EstablishedJanuary 1, 2020 [1]
Parent institution
 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Budget$1.1 billion
Dean Daniel P. Huttenlocher
Location
Cambridge
,
Massachusetts
,
United States
Website computing.mit.edu

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is a college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Announced in 2018 to address the growing applications of computing technology, the college is an Institute-wide academic unit that works alongside MIT's five Schools of Architecture and Planning, Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Science, and Management. The college emphasizes artificial intelligence research, interdisciplinary applications of computing, and social and ethical responsibilities of computing. [2] It aims to be an interdisciplinary hub for work in artificial intelligence, computer science, data science, and related fields. Its creation was the first significant change to MIT's academic structure since the early 1950s. [3]

Contents

The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing is named after The Blackstone Group chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman, who donated $350 million of the college's $1.1 billion funding commitment. [1] The college's funding sources were met with criticism, with students and staff contrasting MIT's stated emphasis on ethics against Schwarzman's controversial business practices [4] [5] and support for Donald Trump. [6] [7] [8]

Headquarters

The 2018 announcement of the college's creation included a 150,000–165,000-square-foot (13,900–15,300 m2) new building to provide enough room on campus for 65 faculty members, plus graduate students and staff (most of which would be funded by the college). [9] The new headquarters was designated as Building 45, reflecting the campus-wide number system and the chosen location on the site of Building 44. [10] Building 44 had been home to MIT's cyclotron and a giant "J" sign celebrating the discovery of the J/psi meson. [11] The Edgerton Student Shop, approximately six members of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and two physics classes [12] were relocated to other buildings by summer 2019, [10] and Building 44 was demolished starting in September 2019. [13] [14] The new building at 51 Vassar Street is being designed by the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and is expected to be complete in 2023. [15] Plans were released in January, 2021. [13]

History

Stephen A. Schwarzman StephenSchwarzman.jpg
Stephen A. Schwarzman

On October 15, 2018, MIT president L. Rafael Reif announced the creation of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. MIT described the initiative as its response to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and computing technology. [2] [16] The main part of the college's funding consisted of a $350 million gift from businessman Stephen A. Schwarzman, characterized by Forbes as one of the largest donations made to a single academic institution. [17]

The college was shaped by a several-year-long conversation between Reif and Schwarzman prior to the donation, where the two raised questions on the potential of AI and its future impacts on society. Schwarzman emphasized the global effects of AI and believed that America needed to invest further into developing the technology, and Reif desired a university-wide initiative that funds and promotes collaboration between departments. [18] The resulting college sets a goal of educating "the bilinguals of the future", referring to students skilled in both computing and its applications to other fields. [16] [18] MIT also stated that the college would emphasize the ethics of AI and computing. [16]

On February 21, 2019, MIT announced Daniel P. Huttenlocher as the inaugural dean of the college. Huttenlocher was praised for his "educational creativity, instinctive collegiality, intellectual depth and breadth, institutional savvy, and industry experience". [19]

On February 26–28, 2019, MIT launched a three-day celebration of the college in an event named "Hello World, Hello MIT". The celebration featured panel discussions, an academic symposium, and talks from several notable figures. The speakers included Reif, Schwarzman, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, author Thomas Friedman, and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. [20] The celebration received heavy criticism from several MIT students, faculty, and alumni, who protested the event and questioned the ethics of past actions by Schwarzman and Kissinger. [21] [22]

Academics and research

The Schwarzman College of Computing has one academic department and several research enterprises which also have degree programs: [23]

The non-degree-granting research labs that are part of the college are: [24] [23]

The establishment of the college added 50 new faculty positions to the university. Half of these positions focus on computer science, while the other half are jointly appointed in collaboration with other departments in the Architecture and Planning, Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Science, and Management. [2] [18] The New York Times described the college's structure as an effort to "alter traditional academic thinking and practice" and allow the university to more effectively bring computing to other fields. [18]

The creation of the College of Computing also started the development of three additional programs meant to integrate closely with other MIT computing activities, for which plans have not been finalized:

Reception

Positive responses

MIT professor and AI researcher Patrick Winston praised the organization of the college and viewed it as an entity poised to serve "all of MIT". He expressed optimism regarding the college's long-term impacts, stating that he has "a very romantic dream of discoveries on par with those of Copernicus, ... Darwin, ... Watson and Crick". [28]

Some MIT students spoke positively regarding the college's potential to "better manage the overflowing major" of computer science. At the time of the college's establishment, roughly 40 percent of MIT undergraduates majored in computer science or a joint program involving computer science. [29]

Negative responses

MIT's creation of the Schwarzman College of Computing led to several negative responses. A group of MIT students, faculty, and alumni issued a strong criticism against the university's decision to accept money from Schwarzman, deeming it to be unethical. In an opinion piece in The Tech , they condemned Schwarzman's relationship as an advisor to US President Donald Trump, his ties to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and his firm's opposition to an affordable housing bill in California. [4] Schwarzman's firm Blackstone responded that "advancing artificial intelligence responsibly is one of the most pressing challenges of our times and it should transcend politics". [4]

From another perspective, some students questioned the societal value of MIT's focus on computing and AI. Viewing MIT administrators' emphasis on these technologies as a fad, they argued that MIT should instead promote research and education in areas that they believed to be more impactful. "[Why] aren't we putting this large sum of money into our climate change research, our urban planning department, or our economics and political science departments?" wrote a student in an opinion piece in The Tech. [30] Students also described MIT's initiative to create the college as "very top-down in its approach" and expressed skepticism regarding "buy-in from faculty, staff, and students". [31]

Outside of MIT, the Yale Daily News wrote that Schwarzman's donation to MIT "appeared to be a snub at Yale". [32] The paper stated that an earlier donation to Yale for a $150 million Schwarzman Center led to similar controversies. The Schwarzman Center was viewed by its critics as "being driven by the donors rather than driven by the faculty and their mission". [32] [33] Schwarzman received his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1969.

Notable people

Notable people affiliated with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing include: [34]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Jay Sussman</span> American computer scientist

Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been involved in artificial intelligence (AI) research at MIT since 1964. His research has centered on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing it to provide more effective methods of science and engineering education. Sussman has also worked in computer languages, in computer architecture, and in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Feigenbaum</span> American computer scientist

Edward Albert Feigenbaum is a computer scientist working in the field of artificial intelligence, and joint winner of the 1994 ACM Turing Award. He is often called the "father of expert systems."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John McCarthy (computer scientist)</span> American scientist (1927–2011)

John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence. He co-authored the document that coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the programming language family Lisp, significantly influenced the design of the language ALGOL, popularized time-sharing, and invented garbage collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory</span> CS and AI Laboratory at MIT (formed by merger in 2003)

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Housed within the Ray and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of the Schwarzman College of Computing but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leo Rafael Reif</span> Venezuelan-born American electrical engineer, writer and academic administrator (born 1950)

Leo Rafael Reif is a Venezuelan American electrical engineer and academic administrator. He previously served as the 17th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2022, provost of the institute from 2005 to 2012, and dean of the institute's EECS department from 2004 to 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Engineering</span> School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The MIT School of Engineering (SoE) is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. SoE has eight academic departments and two interdisciplinary institutes. The School grants SB, MEng, SM, engineer's degrees, and PhD or ScD degrees. As of 2017, the Dean of Engineering is Professor Anantha Chandrakasan. The school is the largest at MIT as measured by undergraduate and graduate enrollments and faculty members.

Ashwin Ram is an Indian-American computer scientist. He was chief innovation officer at PARC from 2011 to 2016, and published books and scientific articles and helped start at least two companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Ng</span> American artificial intelligence researcher

Andrew Yan-Tak Ng is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genevieve Bell</span> Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University

Genevieve Bell is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University and an Australian cultural anthropologist. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice research and technological development, and for being an industry pioneer of the user experience field. Bell was the inaugural director of the Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Innovation Institute (3Ai), which was co-founded by the Australian National University (ANU) and CSIRO’s Data61, and a Distinguished Professor of the ANU College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics. From 2021 to December 2023, she was the inaugural Director of the new ANU School of Cybernetics. She also holds the university's Florence Violet McKenzie Chair, and is the first SRI International Engelbart Distinguished Fellow. Bell is also a Senior Fellow and Vice President at Intel. She is widely published, and holds 13 patents.

Cognitive computing refers to technology platforms that, broadly speaking, are based on the scientific disciplines of artificial intelligence and signal processing. These platforms encompass machine learning, reasoning, natural language processing, speech recognition and vision, human–computer interaction, dialog and narrative generation, among other technologies.

Daniel Peter Huttenlocher is an American computer scientist, academic administrator and corporate director. He is the inaugural dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to this, he notably served as the inaugural dean of Cornell Tech at Cornell University, and as a member of Amazon's board of directors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathy Pham</span> Vietnamese American computer scientist

Kathy Pham is a Vietnamese American computer scientist and product management executive. She has held roles in leadership, engineering, product management, and data science at Google, IBM, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Harris Healthcare, and served as a founding product and engineering member of the United States Digital Service (USDS) in the Executive Office of the President of the United States at The White House. Pham was the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Product and Engineering at the Federal Trade Commission, and the inaugural Executive Director of the National AI Advisory Committee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Lee Isbell Jr.</span> American computationalist, researcher, and educator

Charles Lee Isbell Jr. is an American computationalist, researcher, and educator. He is Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Before joining the faculty there, he was a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing starting in 2002, and served as John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of the College from July 2019 to July 2023. His research interests focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, particularly interactive and human-centered AI. He has published over 100 scientific papers. In addition to his research work, Isbell has been an advocate for increasing access to and diversity in higher education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anantha P. Chandrakasan</span> American engineer

Anantha P. Chandrakasan is the Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, the dean of the School of Engineering, and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and MIT AI Hardware Program, and co-chair the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT–Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John E. Kelly III</span> American IBM executive

John E. Kelly III is an American executive at IBM. He has been described as the "father" of Watson, a computer system most known for competing against humans on Jeopardy! He joined IBM in 1980 and has served as the director of IBM Research.

The MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health is a research center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and health sciences, including disease detection, drug discovery, and the development of medical devices. The MIT Jameel Clinic also supports the commercialization of solutions through grant funding, and has partnered with pharmaceutical companies, like Takeda and Sanofi, and philanthropies, like Community Jameel and Wellcome Trust, to forge collaborations between research and development functions and MIT researchers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Manyika</span> Zimbabwean-American consultant, researcher and writer

James M. Manyika is a Zimbabwean-American academic, consultant, and business executive. He is known for his research and scholarship into the intersection of technology and the economy, including artificial intelligence, robotics automation, and the future of work. He is Google's first Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, reporting directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. He focuses on "shaping and sharing" the company's view on the way tech affects society, the economy, and the planet. In April 2023, his role was expanded to Senior Vice President for Research, Technology & Society and includes overseeing Google Research and Google Labs and focusing more broadly on helping advance Google’s most ambitious innovations in AI, Computing and Science responsibly. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute.

Lynne Edwards Parker is Associate Vice Chancellor and Director of the AI Tennessee Initiative at the University of Tennessee. Previously, she was Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer and Founding Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office at the United States' White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is an American roboticist specializing in multi-robot systems, swarm robotics, and distributed artificial intelligence.

Vivienne Sze is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist whose research focuses on low-power electronics and on the trade-offs between energy use and computing power in the combined design of software and hardware, for applications including video coding and deep neural networks. She is an associate professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where she heads the Energy-Efficient Multimedia Systems Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornell Computing and Information Science</span> Information science program at Cornell University

Cornell Computing and Information Science is the umbrella name for the information science program at Cornell University, a private university based in Ithaca, New York, United States.

References

  1. 1 2 "Home | MIT Schwarzman College of Computing | Massachusetts Institute of Technology". computing.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 "Letter to the MIT community regarding the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing". MIT News. 15 October 2018. Archived from the original on 3 July 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  3. ↑ "MIT reshapes itself to shape the future". MIT News. Archived from the original on 7 September 2020. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 Kary, Tiffany (18 February 2019). "Schwarzman College at MIT Spurs Outcry by Students, Faculty". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 2020-06-14. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  5. ↑ Sheill, Zoe; Zhang, Whitney (7 March 2019). "Protesters gather against College of Computing celebration". The Tech. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  6. ↑ "Celebrating war criminals at MIT's 'ethical' College of Computing". The Tech. Retrieved 2021-01-21.
  7. ↑ "Group at MIT wants a celebration for a new college canceled". AP NEWS. 2019-02-19. Retrieved 2021-01-21.
  8. ↑ Kelly, Kate (2021-01-19). "In Trump, Stephen Schwarzman Found a Chance to Burnish His Legacy". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-01-21.
  9. ↑ "FAQ on the newly established MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing". 15 Oct 2018. Retrieved 2021-01-20.
  10. 1 2 "Building site identified for MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing". 19 Dec 2018.
  11. ↑ "Only at MIT - Why is there a "J" sign on MIT Building 44?" . Retrieved 2021-01-20.
  12. ↑ College of Computing headquarters to replace Building 44
  13. 1 2 MIT's College of Computing building takes shape as Alexandria and BioMed make moves in Boston
  14. ↑ "MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing". 14 Nov 2020.
  15. ↑ 3 Questions: Dan Huttenlocher on the formation of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing
  16. 1 2 3 Vincent, James (15 October 2018). "MIT is investing $1 billion in an AI college". The Verge. Archived from the original on 31 May 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  17. ↑ Adams, Susan (15 October 2018). "Stephen Schwarzman Makes Anchor Gift For New $1 Billion School Of Artificial Intelligence At MIT". Forbes. Archived from the original on 13 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Lohr, Steve (15 October 2018). "M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1 Billion". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  19. ↑ "Dan Huttenlocher named inaugural dean of MIT Schwarzman College of Computing". MIT News. 21 February 2019. Archived from the original on 5 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  20. ↑ "Hello, World. Hello, MIT. | MIT News". news.mit.edu. 4 February 2019. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  21. ↑ McDonald, Danny (18 February 2019). "MIT group calls for university to cancel celebration of new college, apologize for Henry Kissinger invite - The Boston Globe". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  22. ↑ Ng, Jonathan (1 March 2019). "Henry Kissinger warns of dangers of AI at MIT, as students protest his presence". Boston Herald. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  23. 1 2 "MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing" . Retrieved 2020-01-20.
  24. 1 2 3 "Organization | MIT Schwarzman College of Computing | Massachusetts Institute of Technology". computing.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  25. 1 2 3 Terri Park (4 Feb 2020). "A college for the computing age". MIT News.
  26. 1 2 3 Park, Terri (4 February 2020). "A college for the computing age". MIT News. Archived from the original on 6 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  27. ↑ https://computing.mit.edu/cross-cutting/social-and-ethical-responsibilities-of-computing/serc-cases-studies/
  28. ↑ Wahl, Patrick; Gandhi, Anshula; Shi, Jessica (18 October 2018). "MIT to launch $1 billion College of Computing in September 2019". The Tech. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  29. ↑ Chun, Soomin (19 November 2018). "What the College of Computing can do for both MIT and society". The Tech. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  30. ↑ Masroor, Faraz (18 October 2018). "How (not) to spend one billion dollars". The Tech. Archived from the original on 15 June 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  31. ↑ Goldman, Mark (28 February 2019). "Ethical change requires more than a billion dollars". The Tech. Archived from the original on 15 June 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  32. 1 2 Cho, Serena (20 February 2019). "Schwarzman gift to MIT draws criticism". yaledailynews.com. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  33. ↑ Sleeper, Jim (12 December 2019). "The Tragedy of the Yale Commons". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 15 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  34. ↑ "People | MIT Schwarzman College of Computing | Massachusetts Institute of Technology". computing.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.