Mars College
A Thunder Talk in the Chiba hangar at night — a presenter with a microphone in front of a projection of chess engines and live charts, audience watching from the dark

MIT

Mars Institute of Technology

The seal of the Mars Institute of Technology — two engraved figures flank a pedestal reading Vanlife and Superintelligence over the year 2020, above the motto Mens et Terra

The camp of future technology at Mars. Art gallery, film academy, and boot camp for off-grid AI engineering.

Apply to MIT

01 What Mars Institute of Technology is

  1. Drone view of the multi-story pallet-rack campus at Mars — plywood mezzanines, solar panels, and open desert behind
    01

    An off-grid applied research lab

    MIT is part camp, part academy that builds a gallery and engineering school dedicated to technological self-reliance.

  2. Marzipan teaching AI art at Mars — Burroughs Quotes screen with AI-generated mandala imagery
    02

    Outsmart the superintelligence

    Classes on AI tools and skills, for art, knowledge, productivity, and commerce.

  3. Visitors viewing video works on wall-mounted screens at the Chiba gallery opening, Mars 2026
    03

    Learning by making

    The semester culminates with a group exhibition, film festival, and conference.

02 Mars Institute of Technology — at Mars since the beginning

Eight years of AI on Mars.

AI studies on Mars date back to before Mars College had its name. Starting as a creative AI class in the desert, and evolving from major to department to institute, Martians predict and invoke the future through bots, films, zines, galleries, and installations.

  1. 2019

    BBGAN at Bombay Beach Biennale, early generative video trained on town and desert.

  2. 2020

    Abraham, The Portal, and Little Martians.

  3. 2021

    First creative AI class, and telepresence robots.

  1. 2022

    Mars Bots and Mulabonding. GPT-3 house bots and the cohort AI art they generated.

  2. 2023

    Creative AI major launched. First AI Film Festival.

  3. 2024

    The AI Film Festival goes outdoors at Bombay Beach.

  1. 2025

    Personal agents for every Martian. First gallery, and Painted Canyons.

  2. 2026

    AI Camp, second gallery.

  3. 2027

    Launch of the Mars Institute of Technology.

03 How it works

MIT Curriculum

The calendar and program for MIT.

What you give

  • A lightning talk during Ideas Week.
  • Contribute to galleries and Mars Electronica.
  • Organize a workshop, screening, or study group of your own.
  • Basic chores in shared spaces.

What you get

  • Compute grant for AI projects.
  • Space: screens, projectors, materials to create with.
  • Access to housing inside the MIT buildings.

In the desert · Jan – Mar

The semester

3 months on-site · Mars

  1. Nov – Dec DPW builds Mars campus
  2. Jan 4 Mars College begins
  3. Jan 11 – 17 Ideas Week
  4. Wed nights Thunder Talks · weekly
  5. Jan · Feb · Mar Moons of Mars · 3 gallery shows
  6. Feb 13 – 15 Declaration Days · midterm
  7. Mar 26 – 28 Mars Electronica · finals
  8. April Unbuild

04 The gallery

The gallery ties the school together.

The Mars semester is anchored to monthly group exhibitions in a shared gallery we build in the open desert.

The 2026 AI Film Festival screened outdoors at the Bombay Beach Arts Center — audience in folding chairs under the recycled-metal fish sculpture, palm tree beside the glowing screen

05 Mars Electronica · finals

The Film Festival.

The fifth annual AI Film Festival will be screened during Mars Electronica, our year end celebration.

Learn more about our AI Film Festival

06 Outsmart the superintelligence

Off-Grid AI Engineering.

MIT is dedicated to cultivating technological self-reliance, and harnessing AI to support your lifestyle, not your employer. Here's what we work on.

  1. 01

    Personal AI

    A coach, digital twin, chief of staff, guardian angel, second brain. An agent that knows you and answers only to you.

  2. 02

    Off-Grid Agents

    Open-source, self-hosted, local models. A stack that doesn't go down when the cloud does.

  3. 03

    Art with AI

    Film, music, performance, live code. AI as an instrument, not a style.

  4. 04

    Earning a living

    How people using AI are making money now, and how you might.

"I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world."
— Sam Altman
"There's a 25% chance that things go really, really badly."
— Dario Amodei

The year is 2033. Superintelligence has taken hold of the economy. Unemployment is at 90%. Bay Area rent is $50,000 a month. Sound crazy? It's the future every frontier-AI CEO is openly predicting, and the future we've been preparing for since we started Mars College.

The application