US billionaire Stephen Schwarzman gives £150 million to Oxford University

Oxford University has been given a donation of £150 million by a benefactor in what is believed to be the biggest in its history.

The gift from US businessman Stephen Schwarzman exceeds any other donation and will see the creation of a new humanities centre.

Mr Schwarzman is the billionaire chief executive and co-founder of investment firm Blackstone.

The financial injection will see the university's English, history, linguistics, philology and phonetics, medieval and modern languages, music, philosophy, and theology and religion programmes housed together for the first time and is due to open in 2024.

Mr Schwarzman, who is not an Oxford graduate, said he is "proud" to partner with the university to create the centre, which will also include performing arts and exhibition venues.

He told the BBC's Today programme: "AI is going to be the fourth revolution, and it is going to impact jobs, excellence, efficiency and it is a force for amazing good and also a potential force for not good.

"And what is important about it isn't just what it can do, but making sure it is introduced in a way unlike the internet.

"The internet was invented by a bunch of computer scientists and they threw it out there because they thought it was cool.

"And parts of it were cool - interconnectedness, globally the ability to communicate, it is pretty amazing. What they forgot were all the negatives, this inability to control cyber bullying, lack of freedom of speech - all kinds of negative things."

The Schwarzman Centre will also be home to Oxford's new Institute for Ethics in AI, and the building will include performing arts and exhibition venues.

Mr Schwarzman, who did not study at Oxford, told the Daily Mail: "When I was 15 years old I visited Oxford and I was really impressed.

"I never imagined anything in the world could exist with such extraordinary buildings. It was so different to where I grew up."

Professor Louise Richardson, vice chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: "This generous donation from Stephen A. Schwarzman marks a significant endorsement of the value of the Humanities in the 21st century and in Oxford University as the world leader in the field."

The university said the 72-year-old's multimillion-pound donation marks its largest single gift since the Renaissance.

In October last year Mr Schwarzman announced a foundational £279 million gift to establish the Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT in the US, and in 2007 he also donated £79 million to the New York Public Library, whose board he serves.