About

Launched in 2025 through a gift from Reed Hastings '83, the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity prepares the Bowdoin community to engage critically with AI and its ethical impacts.

Three students laugh together while working on laptops at a shared table during the AI & Creativity Hackathon

Hastings team members sit onstage, holding microphones and listening as one speaker talks

Students and guest panelists share a meal and conversation in Main Lounge before the event "Human First: Leadership Skills AI Can't Replace"

A student maps out a data pipeline and scoring formula on a whiteboard while others work on laptops nearby

Vision

The future of AI will be shaped by those willing to engage hard questions: When should AI serve as our tool, and when should we refrain from using it? Who benefits, and at what cost? How can AI expand, rather than constrain, our capabilities? What can't be automated? What shouldn't be?

We ask these questions to cultivate more than technical knowledge in our graduates. We foster creativity to find new solutions, wisdom to know when human values matter most, and ethical reasoning to shape AI toward human flourishing.

Our Work

We create spaces to begin asking these questions in campus-wide conversations, lectures, panels, and workshops that aim to engage the entire Bowdoin community. We provide opportunities to dive deeper through our support for faculty, staff, and student research critically examining, thoughtfully utilizing, and ethically shaping AI.

Ten new Hastings faculty, joining departments across the College, extend this work. They bring AI expertise to their teaching and research while lowering the student-to-faculty ratio and making room for the small classes central to Bowdoin's liberal arts education.

We recognize that there are many ways to meaningfully respond to AI in the classroom. Through events and resources, we support faculty realigning their teaching in light of AI, whether they choose intentional integration or purposeful exclusion.