IBM teams up with IIT-Bombay to speed up AI research in India

Tech giant International Business Machines Corp. has joined hands with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay to speed up artificial intelligence (AI) research in India, IBM said in a statement.

With this collaboration, IIT-Bombay becomes the first institution outside North America to join the firm’s AI Horizons Network.

As part of the initiative, IIT-Bombay’s teachers and students will partner IBM scientists on the application of AI, machine learning, natural language processing and related technologies to business and industry. 

Teams will investigate new techniques for knowledge representation across documents, graphs, charts, and others. According to the statement, this area of research will be critical in helping to develop new AI applications in key industries such as financial services, retail and healthcare, which rely heavily on rich, multi-modal content.

The collaboration will also work on the training and building of domain-specific AI agents (chatbots), designed to aid humans in complex decision-making in trading and investments.
Additionally, work is planned on exploring new, domain-neutral approaches which could enable faster, more efficient training of AI systems. 

“Through this collaboration, we aim to speed up innovation for AI in India, working hand in hand with some of the top scientists and research scholars in the country," said Arvind Krishna, senior vice-president, hybrid cloud and director, IBM Research.

Globally, eight institutions – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, Universite de Montreal, University of Maryland at Baltimore County, UC San Diego and University of Massachusetts at Amherst -- are working with IBM, in key areas designed to speed up the development of AI technologies. These technologies include deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and others, as well as their application to big societal challenges, ranging from aiding the understanding of disease, education and cybersecurity.