“By tapping the united strength of these and other interlocking fields and capitalizing on what they can teach each other, we seek to answer the deepest questions about intelligence — and to deliver transformative new gifts for humankind.”
L. Rafael Reif, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The current socio-economic and political global climate is cause for concern. Rising nuclear tensions, political uncertainty and the devastating effects of climate change have resulted in the Doomsday Clock moving closer to midnight.
However, this doom and gloom is proving a catalyst for the way bright minds in AI use this technology. It’s a pivotal time for those involved in Artificial Intelligence. Many within the community are looking at how it can improve the state of the world we live in. A new approach to AI research by MIT IQ is the latest initiative to tackle some of these concerns.
MIT announced last week that they’re launching the MIT Intelligence Quest, (MIT IQ). “An initiative to discover the foundations of human intelligence and drive the development of technological tools that can positively influence virtually every aspect of society.”
They have a different approach to better the understanding of human intelligence. They hope to develop intelligent machines and strengthen collaboration amongst the scientific community. MIT’s news office has stated that they are setting out to answer two questions. “How does human intelligence work, in engineering terms? And “how can we use that deep grasp of human intelligence to build wiser and more useful machines, to the benefit of society?”
They aim to research these questions through two teams. “The Core” focuses on machine learning algorithms and uses computer science to gain insights into human and machine intelligence. “The Bridge”, applies this work to disciplines like medical diagnosis, automation, biology, finance, drug discovery and manufacturing, as well as other initiatives in research and education.
The foundations of AI date back to the 1950s. MIT believes that this is something we need to revisit and to take a new approach. By reverse-engineering human intelligence, they aim to relearn and reinvestigate the fundamentals of AI in order to develop new algorithms from these new approaches.
On top of this, they aim to cover the ethical implications of AI on our society. We’re seeing a much-needed shift in the relationship between education and industry. As such, many organisations use resources to delve into how we can use this technology for good. MIT IQ aims to bring together and forge a ‘culture of collaboration’ between engineers, computer and social scientists, and researchers in order to learn from one another. Through this, they hope to answer some of the most burning questions that will help to drive the development of AI.
