From Vision to Impact: One Year of the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity

One of the central arguments of that address and part of her overall vision is that the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) makes a liberal arts education more relevant than ever. A psychologist and cognitive scientist, Zaki has long been engaged with the kinds of questions artificial intelligence raises about what it means to be human.

Speaking more recently with a group of alumni, Zaki said she “can't go an hour of a day without thinking about human cognition.” It is something that has made her acutely aware of the core questions AI asks of society: “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have inequity?”

“This gift,” said President Zaki, “has allowed us to begin this work in earnest.”

Realizing the Vision

When asked to describe the full potential of artificial intelligence, Eric Chown, faculty director of the Hastings Initiative, likes to draw inspiration from an ancient Greek scholar. “Archimedes once said, ‘Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I shall move the earth.’ Well, AI is a very long lever indeed.”

Grants

Joe Gaetano ’27 wants to make it easier for nonprofits to find and connect with sources of funding. With the help of a grant from the Hastings Initiative, he is developing an app using Anthropopic’s Claude Code to streamline the fundraising process and ease pressure on already lean investment teams.

“My interest in doing this started in the class Technology and The Common Good, where we worked with nonprofit organizations and got to hear real feedback on what organizations are struggling with today,” said Gaetano.

He is one of several students using Hastings grants, worth up to $1,000, to create meaningful change using AI technology:

• Others include Athalia Esty ’26 and Subi Kalra ’26, both pursuing honors projects under Assistant Professor of Economics Martin Abel, who is a member of the Hastings Initiative Advisory Committee. Esty’s project explores gender differences and competitive pressure in AI adoption while Kalra is conducting an experiment to see how people change their beliefs and behavior in response to information about the environmental impacts of AI.
• Prathit Kurup ’26 and Andrew Mott ’26 organized a recent workshop to help students to understand and enhance their usage of generative AI tools and thoughtfully to consider the implications of AI as liberal arts students.
• As of part of his senior honors project, Mingi Kang ’26 is developing a novel algorithm. Called Convolutional Nearest Neighbors, it aims to bridge the two dominant concepts in artificial intelligence, an idea that has significant implications for the development of more efficient artificial intelligence systems.

Additionally, the initiative has enabled the College to hire six students as Hastings ambassadors, which has the dual use of helping to further the education of those six students while they help to educate the campus. At the end of the spring semester, an additional five students will be taken on as Hastings Summer Fellows and spend time working on AI-related projects.

Many faculty members are also using Hastings grants to further their AI-related research. By the end of the first year, the Hastings Initiative had funded more than thirty faculty grants, ranging from $165 up to $5,000. The College has now embarked on a second round of faculty funding.

Collaboration

Bowdoin has reached out to a number of schools to collaborate on events. Professor Chown, for example, has launched a webinar series with faculty from Carleton, Colby, and Connecticut Colleges. “I meet regularly with those schools to discuss ways we can share ideas and resources,” says Chown, who is also planning to organize a conference at Bowdoin later this year, bringing in more expertise from other liberal arts schools.

On the student level, the Hastings Initiative hosted a “hackathon” on the Bowdoin campus in October 2025, also bringing in students from Bates and Colby, giving them the chance to use AI tools to tackle a number of challenges—one team, for example, designed an app to help people reduce their carbon footprint—and to get advice from outside experts.

Another of the initiative’s notable features is the Environmental Impact Hub, which explores the hidden cost of AI and the increasing toll that the technology’s energy demands are taking on the environment.

Education

• The initiative sponsors a wide range of programming, including guest speakers, symposia, and workshops.
• Upcoming events include an April 15 alumni conversation Human First, focused on leadership skills AI cannot replace.
• Visiting speakers have included MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini, author Brian Christian, World Bank economist Elif Nisa, and Sam Nordberg ’99, exploring topics from algorithmic bias to AI in health care.
• An early April workshop led by Leo Anthony Celi (MIT/Harvard) will focus on health data and fairness.
• Ongoing opportunities include weekly drop-in sessions on LibreChat, Bowdoin’s secure AI platform, open to faculty and staff.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

“This first year of the initiative was exceptionally fruitful,” said Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Fernando Nascimento, who sits on the initiative’s faculty advisory committee and whose research includes the intersections of digital technology and ethics. “We’ve seen many new research projects, innovative ways to involve students in the ethical discussions on AI, several insightful conversations with external experts, and a fantastic winter workshop for faculty. These efforts,” he added, “reinforce the initiative's original impetus of inviting the entire Bowdoin community to critically engage and shape this technology, through the liberal arts."

Looking ahead, Zaki is clear about the scale of the moment. “The coming tsunami is huge, and we need to be ready,” she said, reflecting on how Bowdoin can lead in a world being rapidly reshaped by AI.

That leadership, she emphasized, begins with students. “The best way that Bowdoin leads is by graduating students that go out and make a difference in the world.” Through the Hastings Initiative, she added, the College is helping to secure that future “by clarifying the role of the liberal arts in this changing world.”