Oxford University has announced its biggest ever cash donation after a US billionaire gave the institution £150 million to investigate the ethics of artificial intelligence.

The money, from philanthropist and businessman Stephen A. Schwarzman, will be used to create the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, which will for the first time ever see Oxford’s seven humanities disciplines housed together alongside exhibition and performances spaces.

With a planned opening in 2024, the Schwarzman Centre will also house the new Institute for Ethics in AI, which will lead the study of the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and other new computing technologies.

The generous donation surpasses that of British businessman David Harding, who gifted £100 million to the University of Cambridge in February of this year.

It is believed that Mr Schwarzman’s donation is the biggest cash gift in Oxford’s near 1,000-year history. It may be the largest ever donation to the university, but historians at the university are cautious about stating that emphatically because of the difficulty of valuing land from hundreds of years ago. They are confident it is the largest donation since the Renaissance, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, gifted land to establish All Soul’s College in 1438.