Digital transformation

IBM and MIT To Establish MIT-IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence Lab

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MIT News Office, 7 September. IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently announced that IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT-IBM Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab in partnership with MIT.

The new lab will be one of the largest long-term university-industry collaborations to date and will mobilize the talent of more than 100 AI scientists, professors, and students to pursue joint research at IBM’s Research Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, co-located with the IBM Watson Health and IBM Security headquarters in Kendall Square—and on the neighboring MIT campus. The lab will be co-chaired by Dario Gil, IBM research vice president of AI and IBM Q, and Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering.

The institutes plan to issue a call for proposals to MIT researchers and IBM scientists to submit their ideas for joint research to push the boundaries in AI science and technology in several areas, including:

  • AI algorithms

  • Physics of AI

  • Application of AI to industries

  • Advancing shared prosperity through AI

“I am delighted by this new collaboration,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif says. “True breakthroughs are often the result of fresh thinking inspired by new kinds of research teams. The combined MIT and IBM talent dedicated to this new effort will bring formidable power to a field with staggering potential to advance knowledge and help solve important challenges.”
In addition to IBM’s plan to produce innovations that advance the frontiers of AI, a distinct objective of the new lab is to encourage MIT faculty and students to launch companies that will focus on commercializing AI inventions and technologies that are developed at the lab. The lab’s scientists also will publish their work, contribute to the release of open source material, and foster an adherence to the ethical application of AI.

For information about the new AI Lab, please visit MITIBMWatsonAILab.mit.edu.