Google on Wednesday announced a $1 million gift to North Carolina Central University to establish an institute for AI research.
School officials say this will be a first of its kind institute at a Historically Black Colleges and University in the United States. The initiative will provide cutting edge courses, mentorship and hands-on research opportunities with artificial intelligence.
Wednesday’s announcement comes as the technology giant unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence designed to tackle more of the work and thinking done by humans as it tries to stay on the technology’s cutting edge while also trying to fend off regulatory threats to its empire.
The next generation of Google’s AI is being packaged under the Gemini umbrella, which was unveiled a year ago. Google is framing its release of Gemini 2.0 as a springboard for AI agents built to interpret images shown through a smartphone, perform a variety of tedious chores, remember the conversations consumers have with people, help video game players plot strategy and even tackle the task of doing online searches.