MIT is aiming for AI moonshots with Intelligence Quest
Artificial intelligence has long been a
focus for MIT. The school’s been researching the space since the late
’50s, giving rise (and lending its name) to the lab that would
ultimately become known as CSAIL. But the Cambridge university thinks it
can do more to elevate the rapidly expanding field.
This week, the school announced the launch of the MIT Intelligence Quest,
an initiative aimed at leveraging its AI research into something it
believes could be game-changing for the category. The school has divided
its plan into two distinct categories: “The Core” and “The Bridge.”
“The Core is basically
reverse-engineering human intelligence,” dean of the MIT School of
Engineering Anantha Chandrakasan tells TechCrunch, “which will give us
new insights into developing tools and algorithms, which we can apply to
different disciplines. And at the same time, these new computer science
techniques can help us with the understanding of the human brain. It’s
very tightly linked between cognitive science, near science and computer
science.”
The Bridge, meanwhile, is designed to
provide access to AI and ML tools across its various disciplines. That
includes research from both MIT and other schools, made available to
students and staff.
“Many of the products are moonshoots,”
explains James DiCarlo, head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive
Sciences. “They involve teams of scientists and engineers working
together. It’s essentially a new model and we need folks and resources
behind that.”
Funding for the initiative will be
provided by a combination of philanthropic donations and partnerships
with corporations. But while the school has had blanket partnerships in
the past, including, notably, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the goal here
is not to become beholden to any single company. Ideally the school will
be able to work alongside a broad range of companies to achieve its
large-scale goals.
“Imagine if we can build machine
intelligence that grows the way a human does,” adds professor of
Cognitive Science and Computation, Josh Tenenbaum. “That starts like a
baby and learns like a child. That’s the oldest idea in AI and it’s
probably the best idea… But this is a thing we can only take on
seriously now and only by combining the science and engineering of
intelligence.”(Via MIT, Techcrunch)
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