Schwarzman College of Computing Building Dedication
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Thank you, Sally, and my thanks to you and Dan for including me today.
I am delighted to join you all for the dedication of a truly beautiful addition to MIT’s built landscape.
I would like to take a few minutes to recall the thought process that led to this spectacular result.
In 2016 and 2017, MIT’s leadership began brainstorming possible avenues to deal with two issues:
The first was the continuously increasing demand for computer science education by our students, who were recognizing that computing was quickly becoming as indispensable as math.
The second issue was our realization that artificial intelligence would soon permeate everything, everywhere. This meant that MIT needed to expand its education and research in growing areas of computing, such as AI. Furthermore, MIT needed to prepare graduates ready to lead a rapidly evolving data-driven, algorithm-enabled economy.
We estimated that we would have to double the size of our computer science faculty to properly address our objectives. But, organizationally, where would they sit? EECS was already, by far, our largest academic department at MIT. Increasing its size as is would not have helped with the foreseeable need to infuse computing throughout MIT—or given us the additional physical space required to house additional faculty. Then, in the fall of 2017, the seven Turing Award winners on MIT’s active faculty sent an open letter recommending—and I quote—“the bold step of establishing a School of Computing at MIT.” So, we concluded that we had to find a comprehensive solution, and that time was of the essence.
Luckily for us, Steve Schwarzman had also been thinking about the likelihood that artificial intelligence would transform our world. And he was concerned that the United States was falling behind, in that it was preparing to shape neither the future of AI, nor the future with AI. I’d long admired how Steve absorbs a tremendous amount of information from different sources and combines them in a way that allows him to foresee paradigm shifts. So, he and I had been talking about these challenging issues for some time.
In January of 2018, I mentioned to Steve that we were thinking of doubling the size of the computing faculty at MIT with focus on AI, and of establishing a new organizational and physical entity to provide the proper academic home for these additional faculty members. And I gingerly asked Steve whether he would be interested in supporting such an effort. His answer was, in principle, yes, and he asked to be kept informed.
I was delighted, of course, but this also felt like a tightrope walk. There was the risk that the faculty might not go along with the concept, which would seriously disappoint Steve. Or, that the faculty would get excited about developing the concept and, at the end, Steve might not be interested.
But Steve was the perfect partner. He has an amazing ability to look at what appears to be a hopelessly complex situation and distill it to its essence quickly. And then he moves into problem-solving mode, if the problem is of interest to him and worthy of his time. Of course, I did keep him informed.
At MIT, we consulted broadly with the faculty, particularly those who would be most affected by the most serious structural change to occur at MIT since the 1950s. Dean of Engineering Anantha Chandrakasan played an instrumental role in engaging various departments and several hundred MIT faculty members in extensive discussions that eventually led to a vision for the college. And, in October of 2018, after almost a year of discussions, we announced the launch of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing.
We wanted the college to further strengthen MIT’s computer science core, including AI—as well as serve as a bridge between computing and all other disciplines. We understood that it was crucial to educate students with knowledge and expertise in their discipline of choice but also fluent in AI and computing. We called them “computing bilinguals.”
We made the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing an important part of our design for the college, so our students and faculty would consider serious risks such as AI-generated disinformation, autonomous weapons, bias, loss of jobs—as well as opportunities to shape advances for the greater good. These societal, ethical, and policy aspects were of particular importance to Steve.
Today, we are offering our students a truly bilingual education, as the college’s Common Ground for Computing Education develops new classes that blend computing with other fields. And our faculty, students, and postdocs are now using AI to discover new antibiotics, detect cancer early, compose music, and monitor biodiversity at a global scale—to cite just a few examples.
In the future, I am convinced that the occupants of this building and their collaborators across campus will make fundamental contributions to the development of AI that enhances the capabilities of human intelligence, that enriches many jobs and creates many new ones. I believe that this work will not only increase humanity’s productivity—but also expand our capacity to heal the world.
And now, I’d like to ask Steve Schwarzman to join me, so I can present two gifts.
The first, Steve, is a sketch of the early building concept by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to honor the role you played in envisioning this magnificent space.
Our second gift is a photograph of the building lobby taken one early evening in late January, at the golden hour. I like it because the warmth of the image reflects the brilliance, humanity, and goodwill of the people now brought together by the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
Thank you, Steve, for making all of this possible!
Would you like to say a few words?
L. Rafael Reif