IBM and MIT have inked a $240m research venture aimed at developing artificial intelligence technologies over a 10-year term.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and US-based technology company IBM have signed a $240m partnership agreement to set up a research laboratory for artificial intelligence (AI), according to TechCrunch.
Apart from the intellectual property (IP) reserved for IBM products, both parties hope to release some laboratory results into the open source domain. The university also expects to generate some AI spinouts.
The partnership will last for 10 years. Research goals include work on AI algorithms to explore whether systems can take a generalised approach to problem-solving so they might augment human intelligence as well as leveraging it.
Researchers will also consider the societal, economic and ethical impacts of AI, and apply quantum computing to AI for machine learning purposes to help solve problems too complex for conventional machines.
More than 100 AI experts will be deployed at the IBM Research Laboratory, close to IBM’s health and security bases, as well as the university.
The program will be co-chaired by Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Dario Gil, research vice-president of AI at IBM.
John Kelly, senior vice-president of cognitive solutions and research at IBM, said: “The field of artificial intelligence has experienced incredible growth and progress over the past decade.
“Yet today’s AI systems, as remarkable as they are, will require new innovations to tackle increasingly difficult real-world problems to improve our work and lives.
“The extremely broad and deep technical capabilities and talent at MIT and IBM are unmatched, and will lead the field of AI for at least the next decade.”
