The Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings wants more researchers and students to ask deep questions about artificial intelligence and its potential to upend human norms.
To that end, Mr. Hastings has donated $50 million to Bowdoin College, his alma mater, to create a research initiative on “A.I. and Humanity” — the largest gift to the liberal arts college in Maine since its founding in 1794, the school announced on Monday.
The aim of the program, Mr. Hastings and school officials said, is to make Bowdoin a mecca for studying the risks and consequences of A.I. The initiative also aims to help prepare students to grapple with emerging technologies that can manufacture humanlike texts and even produce formulas for potential new drug compounds.
The idea for the program grew out of discussions over the last few months between Mr. Hastings and Bowdoin’s president, Safa R. Zaki, a cognitive scientist, they said. Bowdoin plans to use part of the money to hire 10 faculty members and to support professors “who want to incorporate and interrogate A.I.” in their teaching and research.
In an interview, Mr. Hastings said it was urgent for more researchers to tackle such questions because of the speed of A.I. advances and the significant disruptions the systems could bring to human endeavors like work and relationships.
“We’re going to be fighting for the survival of humanity and the flourishing of humanity,” Mr. Hastings said. He compared A.I. to social networks, noting that social networking had grown so fast that few people initially understood the changes it might bring to human interactions and behavior.
“The A.I. change, I think, will be much bigger than the social networking change,” Mr. Hastings added. “So it’s important to get started early before we’re overwhelmed by the problems.”
Dr. Zaki said she hoped Bowdoin faculty members and students would study fundamental questions about A.I. and come up with ethical frameworks 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 may widen inequities in society?” Dr. Zaki asked. “We have a moral imperative, as educators, to take this on, to confront A.I.”
Hundreds of millions of people have begun using A.I. for tasks like finding information, producing emails and generating computer code. Developers of such tools say even more powerful A.I. systems are poised to radically alter daily life.
Some prominent Silicon Valley leaders have promoted rosy visions of an A.I.-driven future.
The new initiative at Bowdoin, where Mr. Hastings received a bachelor’s degree in 1983, is aimed at more concretely studying how A.I. might alter society, for better or for worse. Mr. Hastings said he hoped the new program would also help ensure that the technology’s development served and benefited people.
“I’m an extreme techno-optimist and view most of human progress as technology progress on one side and moral-ethical systems on the other side,” he said. “The tech progress is moving ahead very nicely. Our moral-ethical system improvements need some bolstering.”
