GE, Siena partnering on artificial intelligence

Scientists from General Electric Co.'s Global Research Center in Niskayuna are partnering with Siena College on a new artificial intelligence program through the Department of Defense. The program is through DARPA, the Defense Department's famed research arm, officially known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that engages with commercial and educational researchers to develop next generation technologies for the military, although many are eventually adopted for commercial purposes. GE and Siena's Institute of Artificial Intelligence will work together with DARPA's Grounded Artificial Intelligence Language Acquisition program that is working on advancing artificial intelligence programs so the computer systems can "achieve childlike language acquisition and understanding from visual concepts." Artificial intelligence is also known as AI. "Today, 99.9 percent of AI is based on millions of known statistical datapoints with minimal interpretation beyond what the data says," said Peter Tu, GE Research's chief scientist for artificial intelligence, who is leading the DARPA project.