Amazon and Johns Hopkins Announce New AI institute

Amazon and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) today announced the creation of the JHU + Amazon Initiative for Interactive AI (AI2AI).

The Amazon-JHU collaboration will focus on driving ground-breaking AI advances with an emphasis on machine learning, computer vision, natural language understanding, and speech processing. Sanjeev Khudanpur, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will serve as the founding director of the initiative.

Amazon’s sponsorship of AI2AI, which will be housed in JHU’s Whiting School of Engineering, underscores its commitment to partnering with academia to address the most complex challenges in Al, democratizing access to the benefits of Al innovations, and broadening participation in research from diverse, interdisciplinary scholars, and other innovators.

“Hopkins is already renowned for its pioneering work in these areas of AI, and working with Amazon researchers will accelerate the timetable for the next big strides. I often compare humans and AI to Luke Skywalker and R2D2 in Star Wars: They’re able to accomplish amazing feats in a tiny X-wing fighter because they interact effectively to align their complementary strengths. I am very excited at the prospect of the Hopkins AI community coming together under the auspices of this initiative, and charting the future of transformational, interactive AI together with Amazon researchers,” Khudanpur said.

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