The National University of Singapore (NUS) and IBM announced a new strategic collaboration, which includes the establishment of a new AI research and innovation centre.
To be located at the NUS School of Computing, the new centre aims to accelerate scientific research and build trust in artificial intelligence (AI).
It will serve as an innovation platform for Singapore agencies, academic and research institutions, and companies to jointly conduct cutting-edge AI research with significant translational potential.
As a start, the new centre will focus on three research areas: green AI, safe AI, and AI plus x, where x is a domain that would like to explore the use of AI.
For green AI, the centre will explore ways to reduce AI’s reliance on data and compute. “[We hope that the centre can help] design, deploy, and maintain sustainable and scalable AI systems at a much more reduced energy consumption and using less computational resources without affecting AI’s performance. So for example, developing small AI models that can be used in smaller form factors like mobile devices, or designing hardware to be aligned with AI algorithms as well as developing AI algorithms to be more aware of the limitations of hardware,” says explains Professor Tan Kian Lee, dean of NUS School of Computing, at a media briefing yesterday.
As for safe AI, NUS and IBM will work together to develop tools and methodologies that will enable trustworthy AI.
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The two parties will also collaborate to look at industry use cases for AI plus x. “In chemical engineering, for instance, AI technology can be used to design new biodegradable polymers or materials that are environmentally friendly, which can reduce the use of plastics,” says Tan.
Backed by IBM’s full-stack AI infrastructure
To support those research, the new centre will be equipped with IBM’s full-stack AI-optimised computing infrastructure, including IBM AIU accelerators that are optimised for the efficient inferencing of AI workloads.
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The AI-optimised computing infrastructure will operate on the IBM watsonx data and AI platform and Red Hat hybrid cloud platform. The proposed collaboration would leverage NUS’ expertise to drive technological progress in AI, enabling more powerful, efficient, and versatile AI systems that can tackle increasingly complex tasks.
“We are very excited about this opportunity to collaborate with IBM. We envision a future where an open ecosystem is most vital to harness the best of collective intelligence. Building on the new NUS AI Institute announced earlier this year and NUS’s commitment to green computing and sustainability, we aim to be the leading force in addressing rising industry demand for AI intelligence, cultivating a robust talent pool and contributing to Singapore’s decarbonisation efforts,” says Professor Liu Bin, NUS deputy president (Research and Technology).
Priya Nagpurkar, vice president for Hybrid Cloud and AI Platform at IBM Research, adds: “We are pleased to take this first step toward collaboration with NUS to power breakthrough AI research. IBM and NUS share a common goal to enable innovations in AI and sustainable computing, and we look forward to furthering this collaboration.”
