IBM, MIT partner on $240M Watson AI Lab to study AI's impact and build new tools

On Thursday, MIT and IBM unveiled plans to invest $240 million over the next 10 years to build a new MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. The lab, announced in an MIT press release, will carry out artificial intelligence (AI) research in an effort to propel forward the hardware, software, and algorithms that power AI itself. According to the release, more than 100 AI scientists, professors, and students will work on the research in Cambridge, MA, nearby the MIT campus and other IBM properties. Their work will seek to boost the impact of AI on cybersecurity and healthcare, while also examining AI's impact on society as a whole. "The field of artificial intelligence has experienced incredible growth and progress over the past decade. Yet today's AI systems, as remarkable as they are, will require new innovations to tackle increasingly difficult real-world problems to improve our work and lives," John Kelly III, IBM senior vice president of Cognitive Solutions and Research, said in the release.