Amazon and UCLA are launching a research center that will use industry and academic research to solve the social problems caused by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
The center for human and artificial intelligence science will be located at the Samueli School of engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Amazon will provide $1 million for the first year of cooperation. The parties may extend the agreement for up to four years.
In a press release, UCLA said that its faculty would work with Amazon’s artificial intelligence experts to identify and solve research challenges in the field of artificial intelligence, with special attention to issues such as algorithm deviation, fairness, accountability and responsible artificial intelligence. This collaboration will support doctoral fellowships and research projects as well as community outreach programs.
“We are pleased to work with Amazon to study the future of artificial intelligence and its impact on our world,” said gene bullock, President of UCLA. “The center for human and artificial intelligence science will promote the discovery of artificial intelligence and deepen our understanding of this discipline, which is completely changing the way we use and understand modern technology.”
The center will support AI research under the guidance of an advisory group led by Jens parsberg, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. The team, which includes representatives of Amazon and UCLA, will develop, solicit and select research proposals and review the nomination of scholarship winners.
The center’s funds will support the second, third or fourth year students of the UCLA doctor of engineering program to receive $70000 a year. Researchers will also be invited to participate in Amazon’s paid summer internship.
Stefano Soatto, vice president of AI applied science of Amazon Web services, said: “the center aims to cultivate the educational mission of universities, so it can best cultivate the diversified talents needed to support the AI revolution in the next few years in a way beneficial to all sectors of society.”. Soto is currently on leave as a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He helped Amazon and the university establish a science center.
UCLA today organized an “Amazon Science Day” to celebrate the unveiling of the center and the 52nd anniversary of the birth of the Internet. On October 29, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, directed the transmission of the first Internet information from his laboratory to the Stanford Institute. (Kleinrock’s team sent the first two characters: “Lo” in the login name, and the network crashed.)
The science center is the latest example of Amazon’s cooperation with national universities to promote research in artificial intelligence and other fields. Just this week, for example, Amazon Web services made its debut at its quantum computing research center on the California Institute of Technology campus.
In Seattle, the hometown of Amazon, the University of Washington received a healthy support: in 2012, Amazon established two $1 million machine learning professors at Paul G. Allen School of computer science and engineering. In 2016, Amazon provided $10 million for a new computer science building at the University of Washington.
At least six faculty members from the University of Washington are designated Amazon scholars, which means that they spend 20% to 90% of their time in Amazon. One of the scholars is Pat bajari, an economics professor, who is the chief economist of Amazon.
Ed razovska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, said the University benefited greatly from Amazon’s headquarters in the center of the same forest. Lazowska told geekwire in an email: “since Amazon is only 20 minutes away from the campus by bike, we don’t need to formally reach a broad agreement with them, which is in sharp contrast to universities thousands of miles away.”.