MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing bears the name of Stephen Schwarzman, a right-wing billionaire who gave $350 million to establish the school. Schwarzman is the director of Blackstone Group, a private equity firm driving gentrification and the displacement of Black and Brown peoples from their communities, both in the US and around the world. In California, for example, Blackstone Group has spent huge sums of money to fight against rent control legislation. Schwarzman has also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party, has been an advisor to Donald Trump, and is invested in companies who are driving and profiting from the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in South America.
Stephen Schwarzman is also a close affiliate of the arch-imperialist Henry Kissinger. Both Schwarzman and Kissinger rebranded themselves as experts on the "ethics" and the "future" of "artificial intelligence." Schwarzman gave millions to MIT to start the College of Computing in order to promote so-called "Ethical AI," which will supposedly work to everyone's benefit, with guidance from the US state and major multinational tech corporations. This turn to "ethics" and "ethical computing" has been heavily funded by corporations (such as Google and Microsoft) and the state, who use it to create a progressive veneer for their projects. The Schwarzman College of Computing exemplifies this turn, and a variety of student groups and departments at MIT (including scholars from History, Literature, and Anthropology) have participated in the promotion of this "ethics" farce.
Like MIT as a whole, the Schwarzman College of Computing cultivates deep ties to US corporations and to leaders of the US state. Henry Kissinger was the keynote speaker at an event celebrating the creation of the Schwarzman College of Computing. The promotional event also featured Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google who is also a close advisor to the Pentagon and a major supporter of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland and theft of Palestinian resources (see entry on Google). The Dean of the Schwarzman College, Daniel Huttenlocher, sits on the Board of Directors of Amazon. Huttenlocher, Schmidt, and Kissinger even co-wrote a book on "ethical AI", published in 2022.
Master entity: MIT
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Amazon and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing have several connections and partnerships. The Dean of Schwarzman College of Computing, Daniel Huttenlocher, is also a member of Amazon's Board of Directors.
A promotional event celebrating the creation of MIT Schwarzman College of Computing featured former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Eric Schmidt, Schwarzman College Dean Daniel Huttenlocher, and arch-Imperialist Henry Kissinger also co-wrote a book on "ethical AI", which was published in 2022. This turn to "ethics" and "ethical computing" which Schwarzman College celebrates has been heavily funded by corporations like Google and Microsoft as well as by the US state, who use it to create a progressive veneer for violent and repressive tech projects.