Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings at an interview in Barcelona, Spain, in February 2017. Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings is donating $50 million to Bowdoin College, his alma mater, to launch an initiative for the study of artificial intelligence, the college announced Monday.

It is the largest donation the Brunswick college has received in its 231-year history.

The creation of the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity will include hiring 10 new faculty members, Bowdoin President Safa Zaki said in a letter to faculty, staff and students.

Zaki herself is a cognitive scientist whose research focuses on building and testing computational models of the mind.

The new program will focus on providing ethical frameworks for technology and seeks to prepare students for a world shaped by AI. In addition to hiring more staff, the program will help support existing faculty who want to “incorporate and interrogate AI in their teaching, research and artistic work,” the college said in a prepared statement.

“We are thrilled and so grateful to receive this remarkable support from Reed, who shares our conviction that the AI revolution makes the liberal arts and a Bowdoin education more essential to society,” Zaki said in the statement.

Bowdoin College spokesperson Doug Cook said Zaki was too busy to speak to a Press Herald reporter Monday.

Hastings, who did not respond Monday to a request for an interview, said in the statement that he hoped the donation would “advance Bowdoin’s mission of cultivating wisdom for the common good by deepening the college’s engagement with one of humanity’s most transformative developments: artificial intelligence.”

Hastings graduated from the college in 1983. He went on to earn a master’s degree in artificial intelligence from Stanford University before founding Netflix in 1997. He served as CEO of Netflix for 25 years before becoming executive chairman of the board. Hastings is also an educational philanthropist and served on the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He is currently on the board of several educational organizations.

A student walks through the snow-covered campus at Bowdoin College on Monday. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald

Other Maine educational institutions already offer programs in artificial intelligence, including The Roux Institute in Portland, which runs the Institute for Experiential AI and offers a master of science degree in artificial intelligence, and Colby College in Waterville, whose Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence was the first of its kind at a small liberal arts college.

Colby’s Davis Institute was born from a $30 million donation four years ago. Faculty have prioritized integrating the program into Colby’s curriculum and going beyond the basics of AI. Through the institute, students at Colby have explored everything from the ethical implications of AI-generated art to learning to build their own AI robots.

Michael Donihue, interim director of the Davis Institute, said that according to a recent survey 90% of Colby’s faculty said they were having conversations with students about AI.

He believes the new program at Bowdoin is “terrific” and hopes it will create opportunities for collaboration between the two schools.

Classes in AI are also not brand-new to Bowdoin, which was one of 15 colleges selected through an application process to work with the North Carolina-based National Humanities Center as a part of its Responsible Artificial Intelligence Curriculum Design Project.

The nonprofit center-sponsored project provided academic support and stipends to professors from across the nation to develop courses that give students the ability to explore topics related to AI ethics.

The college developed a course that was co-taught by professors from different disciplines including digital and computational studies, government, philosophy and cinema studies, though Cook said Monday it is not currently being taught.

Staff Writer Leslie Bridgers contributed to this report.