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Studies show that students are increasingly using AI to cheat in the classroom, but if you can’t beat ’em, at least teach ’em how to do it within “ethical frameworks.” That seems to be the philosophy of Bowdoin College, a small, esteemed liberal arts institution in Maine. The approximately 2,000-student school just accepted a $50 million gift—the largest in its 231-year history—from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. The ’83 alumnus’ donation will fund the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity, a “step forward in higher education’s growing role to provide ethical frameworks for technology,” according to the college (via Variety).

“This donation seeks to advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating wisdom for the co*mon good by deepening the College’s engagement with one of humanity’s most transformative developments: artificial intelligence,” wrote Hastings in a statement. The co-founder went on to earn a masters in artificial intelligence from Stanford after graduating from Bowdoin. He continued: “Just as Bowdoin’s mission emphasizes the formation of co*plete individuals who can navigate a world in flux, this initiative will empower students and faculty to critically examine, thoughtfully utilize, and ethically shape AI’s trajectory.”

According to Bowdoin, the initiative’s first priorities include hiring 10 new faculty members across a range of disciplines, supporting current faculty who “want to incorporate and interrogate AI in their teaching, research, and artistic work,” and launching workshops and symposia about the “uses of AI and the changes and challenges it will bring.” 

“Bowdoin is ideally positioned to meet the challenges and opportunities of AI,” opined President Safa Zaki in her own statement. “Our deep co*mitment to the liberal arts and the co*mon good position us to think together about what we are going to value in human cognition, and what we will want our AI systems to do—or not do—going forward in service to humanity.”

“As AI beco*es smarter than humans, we are going to need some deep thinking to keep us flourishing,” Hastings added, per Variety. This particular brand of doomerism about AI overtaking human intelligence is perhaps not what you want to hear from someone associated with the institution you pay a lot of money to help expand your own brain, but at least the college still claims to value deep (human) thinking.