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IBM To Invest $240 Million To Develop AI Research Lab With MIT (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the powers-combined dept.

IBM will spend $240 million over 10 years to develop an artificial intelligence research lab with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pooling the organizations' resources as competition intensifies to produce breakthroughs in the field. Bloomberg reports: The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab will fund projects in four broad areas, including creating better hardware to handle complex computations and figuring out applications of AI in specific industries, the Armonk, New York-based company said Thursday in a statement. While IBM has always conducted long-term research internally, it decided AI was such a vast field that it needed to reach out for talent and ideas, said John Kelly, the head of International Business Machines Corp.'s research and cognitive solutions groups, which includes Watson products. While researchers will focus on long-term innovations in artificial intelligence, IBM will also be looking for developments -- a new medical imaging algorithm, say -- that it can immediately plug into its existing products. Big Blue expects to see results that boost its Watson-branded AI business in the next year or two, Kelly said. The plan is to change the focus and number of teams as needed to produce results, he said. The partnership underscores IBM's focus on building a business selling AI software, a strategy that requires clients to adopt such products and the company to develop offerings that add actual business value and are competitive with juggernauts in artificial intelligence, including Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet. IBM and MIT will jointly own the intellectual property that results from the projects conducted together. The company also has the option to buy out MIT for full ownership, Kelly said.

2 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Re:New lab by sheramil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wait, what? I thought AI was here: Watson is curing cancer, cars are driving themselves, computers are winning lotteries, and everything. Why is a new lab and lots of money needed?

    If you believe even a tenth of a percent of the utter tosh spouted in facial cleanser and hair-care advertisements, we've had nanotechnology for several years.

  2. no surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Having met with top execs at IBM Big Insights, they've had a very hard time getting clients to use their product. As an Apache committer, it's no surprise. IBM has been trying to sell Watson through their big data initiative for years without any luck. The project they did with Wellpoint using Watson went no where and isn't really useful. It was nice for dog & pony show, but that's about it. The challenge with DNN has always been subject matter expertise. The engineers that built the frameworks don't have expertise in the customer's subject matter. Finding people in each field with expertise is challenging and convincing them to spend 3-5 years training DNN is even tougher.

    If you're asking "why doesn't IBM find 10 doctors and pay them for 5 years?" That's just not practical. A doctor isn't interested enough to stop being a doctor and spend 3 years teaching a programmer the subject matter. You need programmers that are experts in DNN to learn enough of a subject to produce something useful. You need to teach a doctor enough about DNN so they can help produce the training dataset. There's a lot of trial and error.

    IBM needs MIT to figure out how to solve the subject matter expertise problem or at minimum reduce the cost/need for subject matter expertise. 240 million is a drop in the bucket when you consider IBM has dumped billions into watson without making any profits.