IBM and MIT partner to build AI that sees and hears like humans

IBM and MIT have partnered to improve AI's ability to interpret sight and sound like humans do. The new IBM-MIT Laboratory for Brain-inspired Multimedia Machine Comprehension is a ‘multi-year’ collaboration between the two organizations that will be looking specifically at the problem of computer vision and audition.

The project that will be led by Jim DiCarlo, head of MIT’s Department of Brain & Cognitive Science will have IBM supply the expertise and technology from its Watson cognitive computing platform, while MIT will conduct research.

According to IBM, the biggest challenge will be to advance pattern recognition and prediction. A human can easily describe what they saw happen in an event and predict what happens next but that's virtually "impossible" for current AI.

This ability could be of immense use in the health industry as well as for repairing complicated machines among other uses.

IBM is investing huge money in AI work. The MIT partnership is one of several IBM has established lately. Other collaborations are tracking AI in decision making, cybersecurity, deep learning for language, and so on.