
M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B - superfx
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/mit-college-artificial-intelligence.html
======
randcraw
This sounds like a direct response to two things (mostly): 1) CMU establishing
a 'department' of AI (where MIT had merely an AI track within the CS program),
and 2) Kai-Fu Lee's recent book on the rise and inevitable domination by China
of all things AI-related -- inviting a new 'space race' between the
superpowers. (A 'brain race'?)

Yet I can't imagine why an entire 'college' of AI is needed. AI simply isn't a
field that's deep or broad enough to warrant an entire college with a handful
of distinct majors, like an engineering college or medical school. Each of
this college's AI degrees will span distinct problem or solution spaces? Not
likely.

Maybe this was the only way to ensure the gift of all $350 million. Or to
build _multiple_ new buildings...

~~~
perennate
MIT's news article [1] has more concrete information. The NYT article is a bit
misleading.

It is a College of Computing, not College of AI. Also note that MIT has
Schools (School of Engineering, School of Science, etc.), not Colleges; so
this will be something different.

For example, according to MIT's FAQ [2], EECS Department will likely continue
to be part of School of Engineering, even as it becomes part of College of
Computing.

In particular:

> The College will reorient MIT to bring the power of computing and AI to all
> fields of study at MIT, allowing the future of computing and AI to be shaped
> by insights from all other disciplines;

> Q: Why is this a college, rather than a school? What is the difference?

> A: The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will work with and across all
> five of MIT’s existing schools. Its naming as a college differentiates it
> from the five schools, and signals that it is an Institute-wide entity: The
> College is designed with cross-cutting education and research as its primary
> missions.

> Q: What kinds of new joint academic programs or degrees are envisioned?

> A: MIT has been making progress in this direction for some time; for
> example, we already offer undergraduate majors that pair computer science
> with economics, biology, mathematics, and urban planning. The MIT Schwarzman
> College of Computing will allow MIT to respond to the student demand the
> Institute is seeing in course and major/minor selection more effectively and
> creatively. It will enable MIT to pursue this vision with unprecedented
> depth and ambition, and will give MIT’s five schools a shared structure for
> collaborative education, research, and innovation in computing and AI.

[1] [http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-reshapes-itself-stephen-
schwarz...](http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-reshapes-itself-stephen-schwarzman-
college-of-computing-1015)

[2] [http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-
college-...](http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-college-of-
computing-1015)

~~~
jmmcd
I think the NYT headline is at fault here. College of Computing makes more
sense than of AI. You can't put CSAIL inside a College of AI, for a start.

~~~
sevensor
Not to mention, the headline implies sending A.I.s to college. Now that would
be progress.

~~~
dvlsg
Taking "machine learning" to the next level, I suppose.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I wish top-rated institutions stopped pretending "AI" means "the last 6 years
in statistical machine learning".

But I guess we all have our pet peeves, eh?

~~~
ryanmarsh
I wish top-rated institutions stoped pretending "Physics" means "the last 6
years in Electricity/Chemistry/etc..."

\- Someone circa 18-hundred-something

 _shrugs_

The two things people dislike the most, the way things are, and when they
change.

~~~
codekilla
The success of statistical machine learning is more limited than may be
obvious. Try to think of problems these methods can't solve, then try to think
of problems they can solve. Which stack is thicker? Then ask yourself, for the
problems they can solve--can they really solve them as well as humans? Machine
Translation, I'm looking at you, Image Recongition--I'm also looking at you.
If they can solve them as well as humans, ask 'how much human intelligence is
imprinted into this machine artifact?' Yes, AlphaGo, I'm looking right at you.

~~~
soared
There are plenty of solutions to get around those problems though. Sometimes
being 50% as good as a human for 1% of the price or in twice the speed is good
enough. Or if it can be correct 50% of the time, but can tell when its wrong,
it can be correct 100% of the time with twice the work. If the work is still
cheaper/faster than humans...

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Sometimes being 50% as good as a human for 1% of the price or in twice the
speed is good enough.

Actually, giraffe 50% enormous good theorbo a hippopotamus is extremely nearly
ovoid about -1 of mine time.

That's 50% of the sentence:

 _Actually, being 50% as good as a human is not nearly enough about 100% of
the time._

And 50% garbage.

------
psykotic
They could call it the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory.

~~~
rasmi
It is noted in this FAQ that CSAIL will become part of the new college.

[http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-
college-...](http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-college-of-
computing-1015)

~~~
neolefty
Oh wow, that article explains it's a much bigger change than the headline says
— all of Course 6, plus CSAIL and several others will move into the College.

But it's also not a "College for Artificial Intelligence" — it's a "College of
Computing".

> A: The founding of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing is the most
> significant structural change since 1950, when MIT established the Sloan
> School of Management and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social
> Sciences. But this is much more than a restructuring: With this change, MIT
> seeks to position itself as a key player in the responsible and ethical
> evolution of technologies that will fundamentally transform society.

------
locacorten
I have been and continue to remain very skeptical about all this hoopla about
AI.

Five years ago, I thought the hoopla about AI is just a fashion and it's all
going to quickly pass.

Two years ago, I thought it's a bubble that will eventually burst.

At this point, I'm wondering whether what's happening is pure re-branding
where we'll stop using the term CS and instead use the term AI.

If I think of AI as CS, I'm ok with it although I don't think graphics, comp.
architecture, networking, and OS are AI. But if the rest of the world wants to
call them AI, then let them.

~~~
tim333
There are reasons to think some isn't hoopla, mostly that hardware is getting
to brain level capabilities in processing power so you can do cool things you
couldn't do before.

~~~
uryga
> hardware is getting to brain level capabilities in processing power

is it? not picking a fight, but i was under the impression that we're nowhere
near. could you expand on this?

~~~
Qqqwxs
My understanding is that you can't really compare processing powers between
brains and computers. They work differently and are better at different
things.

Nobody is going to be better at raw number crunching than a computer, but
there's also no computer that can recognise patterns as well as your brain
can. At this point in time, the computer vs brains argument is very
situational.

~~~
uryga
> My understanding is that you can't really compare processing powers between
> brains and computers.

I agree – I guess I papered over this and basically interpreted GP as saying
"computers are getting fast enough to be able to emulate the brain's pattern
recognition skills", which seems way too strong – hence my question.

------
corndoge
College of Statistics and Nonlinear Function Approximation

~~~
Puer
Unfortunately, I think statistics will continue to be under-appreciated. All
of my mathematics professors in undergraduate said that statistics and linear
algebra are the two most useful fields of math to know and that dedicating
time to studying them will pay dividends. It still surprises me when I apply
for jobs today how few places, even financial or scientific firms, distinguish
between statistics and mathematics in their application forms.

People want to be become machine learning engineers because it's the sexy
thing right now, but they don't want to learn the necessary statistics/linear
algebra/optimization necessary for the roles. In my experience, these "AI" and
"datascience" programs are largely just cash-grabs at most universities. I
don't doubt that M.I.T.'s will be rigorous, but I'm largely skeptical of how
useful these programs actually are.

~~~
mr_overalls
How important is optimization? Like a lot of engineers I know, I took a few
required courses in undergrad on linear algebra and stats. But I've never
studied optimization. And I see it come up all the time on lists of central
theory for ML & AI. . .

Is there a classic textbook on the subject? Are there any free online courses
that are considered good?

[https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=optimization](https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=optimization)

~~~
snakeboy
Nocedal & Wright [1] is generally considered the definitive text for
reference, at least. Very clear and complete from what I recall.

[1]
[https://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387303031](https://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387303031)

------
B-Con
I found the cross-discipline focus on the staff interesting:

> 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.

> [...]

> Traditionally, departments hold sway in hiring and tenure decisions at
> universities. So, for example, a researcher who applied A.I.-based text
> analysis tools in a field like history might be regarded as too much a
> computer scientist by the humanities department and not sufficiently
> technical by the computer science department.

They're not just talking about streamlining "learn these statistical models"
but also expanding humanities studies.

The obvious wins from this that I see are:

a) more applications of A.I. in areas that C.S. students are less interested
in.

b) more people who are knowledgeable about A.I. outside of C.S.

------
logfromblammo
Aren't they jumping the gun, here? We'll need a general AI that can graduate
high school first.~

I'm not sure why they need an entirely new college. Doesn't that just increase
administrative overhead out of proportion to any perceivable benefit?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Expanding scope is how middle managers forge new frontiers to advance their
career.

------
thrilleratplay
Am I the only one who read the title and was not sure if M.I.T was creating an
AI college for students or for AI algorithms to earn accreditation?

~~~
jaxtellerSoA
No you are not. The title is in need of some attention.

------
aaaaaaaaaab
Can I register a trademark for “University of Gradient Descent”? Something
tells me it will be worth a ton of money in a few years.

------
supahfly_remix
> The college, Ms. Nobles said, offers the possibility of a renewal for
> humanities studies at M.I.T., where students flock to computer science and
> engineering.

Do MIT students major in humanities subjects, or is the department's purpose
to make engineering students well-rounded through taking electives in their
department?

~~~
kgilpin
Last year, 90 degrees in the Humanities were awarded by MIT out of a total of
3,490. This presumably includes double majors.

The largest subcategory was Economics, which is considered a humanity subject
at MIT.

[https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/degrees-
awarded](https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/degrees-awarded)

~~~
ghaff
There are also a fair number of other majors that aren't in the School of
Humanities but also aren't what most people would consider STEM like the
fairly large School of Architecture, which includes things like Urban Studies
and Planning.

The overall number also includes a fairly large number of degrees, mostly
masters, from the Sloan School of Management.

------
Invictus0
I'm quite skeptical of the interdisciplinary approach. We already know that
it's possible to create useful neural networks without any "preprogramming",
i.e., creating AlphaGo zero without beginning with any knowledge of Go. An
interdisciplinary approach seems backward in that it premises that we need to
know something about the problem before we can build the tools to find the
solution. That's increasingly not the case, and I think what will ultimately
happen at this College is that CS researchers will wall themselves off from
the rest, who will just slow them down. If you want to bring AI to other
fields, educate the people in those fields or hire an ML engineer.

~~~
fsloth
Um, how do you know what problems are important without deep understanding of
the other fields? Or what answers even make sense?

------
giardini
$1 billion is slightly less than a third of MIT's annual operating
expenditures.

[https://web.mit.edu/facts/financial.html](https://web.mit.edu/facts/financial.html)

This boondoggle will have everyone from department heads and tenured
professors to Boston building contractors climbing over each other to get to
the feeding trough. In the end the billion will be soaked up like a sponge,
everyone will be looking around saying "What happened?", and little will show
as a result of the expenditure.

Better to have selectively (and quietly) researched and invested in more
specific efforts. But yeah, it's hard to find an easy way to spend a billion
dollars.

------
ausbah
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand I think its great that the humanities are getting increased
support in general, and a sort of "upgrade" with more focus on integrating
more statistical and analysis techniques / technologies.

But on the downside this seems to only fuel the hype bubble around "AI". I'd
rather see existing departments and courses get updated with the technologies
and techniques they are trying to integrate rather than a new "College of AI".

~~~
perennate
> I'd rather see existing departments and courses get updated with the
> technologies and techniques they are trying to integrate rather than a new
> "College of AI".

That seems very close to the goal of this new College of Computing (it's not
"College of AI") stated in MIT's FAQ [1]:

> As MIT’s senior leaders have engaged with faculty and departments across
> campus, many have spoken of how their fields are being transformed by modern
> computational methods — specifically, by access to large data sets and the
> tools to learn from them. Some of the most exciting new work in fields like
> political science, economics, linguistics, anthropology, and urban studies —
> as well as in various disciplines in science and engineering — is being made
> possible when advanced computational capabilities are brought to these
> fields.

> The key connector of the College to MIT’s five schools with be the 25
> “bridge” faculty: joint faculty appointments linking the College with
> departments across MIT. With this new structure, MIT aims to educate
> students who are “bilingual” — adept in computing, as well as in their
> primary field. The College will also connect with the rest of MIT through
> its work to develop shared computing resources — infrastructure,
> instrumentation, and technical staffing.

The FAQ says that this unit is named College instead of School (i.e., in
contrast to MIT's School of Engineering, School of Science, etc.) precisely
because it is meant to "work with and across all five of MIT’s existing
schools".

[1] [http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-
college-...](http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-college-of-
computing-1015)

------
kbar13
are we living in the fallout 4 timeline?

[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_Institute](http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_Institute)

------
therealmarv
ever searched for a job in AI? They ALL (at least in Europe) want senior
developers with 5-8 years experience in all sort of areas and no junior AI
devs. Anybody is offering AI jobs (international) for people who got out of
college and specialized in that? Looking for my brother, he is specialized in
AI and looking for months for an AI job in Germany.

~~~
lacker
It's funny how much of a different world Europe seems. In Silicon Valley there
are all sorts of AI jobs. I wonder if there are more AI jobs in San Francisco
than in all of Europe.

~~~
therealmarv
it's not funny if you search for a job. They want developer or admin experts
with ai knowledge but nobody is interested to invest in a newcomer (which
means university degree with knowledge) in ai.

------
liftbigweights
Is there any reason not to link to the MIT news itself?

[https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-reshapes-itself-stephen-
schwar...](https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-reshapes-itself-stephen-schwarzman-
college-of-computing-1015)

Why link to the nytimes when you can link to the actual source?

~~~
danso
Because a press release has a different aim than a news article.

~~~
fermienrico
Excellent point, I never think twice when people insist on the original
source. The motive behind the article matters and secondary independent /
unbiased source can provide a more balanced and truthful perspective.

~~~
liftbigweights
nytimes is as far from independent and unbiased as you can get.

------
cvaidya1986
A step in the right direction! Congratulations!

------
tramGG
How old is the cut off age for enrollment?

------
phoenixstrike
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand, academic donations are always great. On
the other hand, Stephen Schwarzman has a record of giving large donations in
exchange for naming rights. He gave $150 million to Yale to renovate the main
campus center, called "Commons," into the "Schwarzman Center." He gave $25
million to his high school in exchange for naming rights bordering on
autocracy, including having his portrait appear "prominently" throughout the
school. These conditions were scaled back after they were made public,
previously kept private as a condition of the donation. (source:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/answer-
sheet/wp/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2018/04/12/billionaire-offered-25-million-to-high-school-alma-mater-
what-he-wanted-in-return-was-too-much-for-the-district/)) He made a
scholarship program called the "Schwarzman Scholars" modeled after the Rhodes.
Now, MIT.

Look, don't get me wrong. I think donations to academic institutions are
fantastic and he should be lauded for his generous giving. However I think it
is worthwhile as a society for us to inspect these kind of actions a bit more
critically. In my view, Schwarzman, who has no prior record of public
interest, giving, or service prior to the last 10 years, is embarking on an
aggressive campaign to formulate a positive legacy of his name with his money
before he dies. It is artificial, transparent, and revisionist. 100 years from
now, people won't remember Schwarzman for being a Trump
supporter/friend/advisor and a wealthy Republican. As he has made certain with
these donations, Schwarzman will be remembered as a benevolent philanthropist.

He has done an extremely clever thing. Even I can't deny that he has done a
wonderful thing by giving away so much money. So who can justifiably criticize
the intent behind his actions? No one, really.

To me, Schwarzman's donations reveal just how much of culture and history is
straight up bought and paid for. If you have enough money, no matter how you
actually live your life and what you do, you can just pay the right people or
institutions, and you will be forever remembered as a good person. Remember
that.

~~~
gjm11
It's not as if this is an unusual thing. Stanford University is named for
Leland Stanford. Carnegie Mellon University is named for Andrew Carnegie and
Andrew&Richard Mellon. Duke University is named for the father of James
Buchanan Duke. Purdue University is named for John Purdue.

Those people got to name universities by being rich and donating huge
quantities of money. They weren't scholars, nor so far as I know were they
especially virtuous people. They wanted their name on things. If Schwarzman
does the same, it'll be nothing new.

We can go a lot further back, of course. Consider, for instance, King's
College at the University of Cambridge. It's named for King Henry VI, who was
no scholar and doesn't even seem to have been a particularly effective king.
Balliol College at Oxford was named for John de Balliol, notably mostly for
being extremely rich; it seems he didn't even particularly want to found a
college but was told to do it as penance after some sort of dispute with the
Bishop of Durham. That was in the thirteenth century.

------
starpilot
No!

------
bitL
Would be cool if they had an online/remote version of it and offered M.S.
world-wide. Hey MIT, you up for some large-scale experiments in humanities?

~~~
clintonb
MIT and Harvard are co-founders of edX:
[https://www.edx.org/](https://www.edx.org/). While not fully online, MIT does
allow students who earn a MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management online to
apply that course work to the on campus masters program:
[https://www.edx.org/micromasters/mitx-supply-chain-
managemen...](https://www.edx.org/micromasters/mitx-supply-chain-management).

~~~
bitL
None of those are accredited programs and employers don't care at all if you
have them completed. They are treated on the level of MS certified beginner in
something.

~~~
clintonb
edX has partnered with employers who have endorsed many of the programs. As
for the MIT SCM program, the full masters is accredited.

------
maxwell
The association with Schwarzman tarnishes my perception of MIT.

[http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/10/plutocratic-
clas...](http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/10/plutocratic-class-
warrior-stephen.html)

------
yaicedin
School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh. O.G in A.I., I'm biased as
I graduated from there. Awesome awesome place to study A.I.

