From Vision to Impact: One Year of the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity

Source Domain: www.bowdoin.edu

“We need more than ever students who understand ethics, who understand complexity, contingency, who welcome and learn from multiple perspectives, who resist flattened-out explanations,” said Bowdoin College President Safa Zaki at her inauguration in October 2023.

One of the central arguments of that address and part of her overall vision is that the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) makes a liberal arts education more relevant than ever. A psychologist and cognitive scientist, Zaki has long been engaged with the kinds of questions artificial intelligence raises about what it means to be human.

President Zaki visits the student hackathon sponsored by the Hastings Initiative.

Speaking more recently with a group of alumni, Zaki said she “can’t go an hour of a day without thinking about human cognition.” It is something that has made her acutely aware of the core questions AI asks of society: “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have inequity?”

“This gift,” said President Zaki, “has allowed us to begin this work in earnest.”

Realizing the Vision

When asked to describe the full potential of artificial intelligence, Eric Chown, faculty director of the Hastings Initiative, likes to draw inspiration from an ancient Greek scholar. “Archimedes once said, ‘Give me a place to…

Source