IBM partners with IIT-B to advance AI research

MUMBAI: Technology major IBM and the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) on Wednesday announced a partnership to advance artificial intelligence (AI) research in India. With this alliance, the institute will pair its faculty and graduate students with leading AI scientists from IBM Research to accelerate the application of AI, machine learning, natural language processing and related technologies to business and industry.

The department of computer science and engineering at IIT-B will join the AI Horizon Network as part of the collaborative effort. The teams will investigate new techniques for knowledge representation across documents, graphs, charts and other forms of multimedia content. Their aim is to develop new AI applications in industries such as financial services, retail and healthcare. They also aim to advance the field of training and building domain-specific AI agents (chat bots) that are designed to aid humans in complex decision-making such as trading and investment choices in financial services.

Arvind Krishna, senior vice-president, Hybrid Cloud, and director of IBM research released a statement which read, “Over its 20-year history, IBM Research - India has been at the forefront of research advances in technologies like AI and block chain. Through this collaboration with IIT-B, we aim to accelerate the pace of innovation for AI in India, working hand-in-hand with some of the top scientists and research scholars in the country.”

Prof Devang Khakhar, director, IIT-B, said, “This will enable our faculty to work in collaboration with researchers around the world on the frontiers of AI.”