MIT发起MIT IQ项目 学术界意图赢回AI领域主动权

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is launching an ambitious programme, involving hundreds of researchers across the university, to understand human intelligence and apply that knowledge to develop intelligent machines.

麻省理工学院(MIT)正在启动一项雄心勃勃的项目，该项目涉及该校的数百名研究人员，旨在了解人类智力，并利用研究成果开发智能机器。

The MIT Intelligence Quest or MIT IQ, based at an institution that has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence research since the 1950s, is a far-reaching academic effort to regain the initiative in AI. It comes at a time when the technology industry’s fast-growing research labs threaten to suck the field’s most talented scientists, engineers and ideas away from universities.

麻省理工学院的MIT IQ项目是学术界发起的一项旨在赢回在人工智能(AI)领域的主动权、意义深远的努力。MIT自1950年代以来一直处于AI研究的前沿。该项目推出之际，科技行业高速发展的研究实验室大有从各大学吸走AI领域最有才华的科学家、工程师和创意之势。

“We plan to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from the private and public sectors for this effort,” said Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT dean of engineering. “We are having discussions with a broad set of companies that have shown great enthusiasm for the initiative.”

“我们计划从私营和公共部门为该项目筹集数亿美元，”MIT工程学院院长阿南塔•钱德拉卡山(Anantha Chandrakasan)说，“我们正在与一大批对此表现出极大热情的公司进行讨论。”

MIT professors say that tech companies have acknowledged concerns that they are poaching too many AI experts from universities, where they are needed to teach future scientists and engineers as well as carry out basic research. The industry is responding by increasing academic collaboration and funding.

MIT的教授们表示，科技公司已意识到了它们从大学挖走太多AI专家引起的担忧。大学需要这些专家给未来的科学家和工程师授课，并从事基础研究。科技行业的回应是增加学术合作和资助。

“Two weeks ago we had a symposium with several Google and Alphabet companies,” said Josh Tenenbaum, professor of cognitive science and computation. “We can see that industry is keen to replenish the well of ideas and people.”

“两周前，我们与谷歌(Google)等几家Alphabet旗下公司举行了一场研讨会，”认知科学和计算科学教授乔希•特南鲍姆(Josh Tenenbaum)说，“我们可以看到，该行业热衷于补充创意和人才。”

MIT hopes to sign collaborations similar to that announced in September with IBM, in which the computing company agreed to invest $240m in a new MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

MIT希望签署类似于去年9月宣布的与IBM的合作协议。该协议显示，IBM同意投资2.4亿美元成立一个新的MIT-IBM 沃森人工智能实验室(MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab)。

The MIT IQ programme sets out to answer two big questions, said Rafael Reif, the university’s president: “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?” MIT IQ 项目旨在回答两个重大问题，MIT校长拉斐尔•赖夫(Rafael Reif)说：“从工程学看，人类智力是如何起作用的?我们如何才能利用对人类智力的深刻理解，制造出更聪明、更有用的机器?”

It will aim to deliver the answers through two linked entities. The first, called “The Core”, will work on the science and engineering of human and machine intelligence in general. As well as gaining fundamental understanding of how natural and computer brains work, it will generate machine-learning algorithms for more specific applications.

该项目的目标是通过两个相互联系的实体来找出答案。第一个实体被称为“核心”(The Core)，将在总体上研究人类智力和机器智能的科学和工程学。除了获得对自然大脑和计算机大脑工作原理的基本理解外，它还将生成针对更具体用途的机器学习算法。

The second entity, “The Bridge” will apply discoveries in natural and artificial intelligence to a wide variety of disciplines including disease diagnosis, drug discovery, materials and manufacturing design, automation, synthetic biology and finance. Both will collaborate with research labs worldwide.

第二个实体“桥”(The Bridge)将把在自然智能和人工智能领域的研究成果，应用到包括疾病诊断、药物发现、材料和制造设计、自动化、合成生物学和金融的广大领域。这两个实体都将与世界各地的研究实验室展开合作。

MIT already has more than 200 “principal investigators” (senior scientists) working on aspects of natural and artificial intelligence, said Prof Reif. “We are amplifying this research by providing additional resources and connecting researchers more closely together.”

赖夫教授说，MIT已有200多名“项目负责人”(资深科学家)负责自然和人工智能方面的研究。“我们通过提供额外的资源和加强研究人员之间的联系，来扩大这项研究。”

Prof Tenenbaum said he was looking forward to reproducing in a machine the way human intelligence develops from birth though infancy and childhood. His colleague Dina Katabi, professor of computer science, wants to build an intelligent home for patients with chronic disease, which would constantly monitor their health and predict problems and forestall emergencies before they occur.

特南鲍姆教授说，他期待着在机器中重现人类智力从出生到婴儿到儿童的发展过程。他的同事、计算机科学教授迪娜•卡塔比(Dina Katabi)希望为慢性病患者建立一个智能之家，它可以持续监测患者的健康状况，预测问题，并预先在病情危急之前采取措施。

Adrian Weller, senior research fellow at the Alan Turing Institute in London, the UK national research centre for AI, said: “We warmly welcome this MIT initiative. AI has made great progress in the last few years but we are still very far from enabling machines to do things that our human brains can do without effort.”

艾德里安•韦勒(Adrian Weller)是英国国家AI研究中心伦敦艾伦•图灵研究所(Alan Turing Institute)的高级研究员。他说：“我们热烈欢迎MIT的这项倡议。在过去几年里，AI已取得了很大进展，但我们还远远不能让机器毫不费力地完成我们人类大脑所能做到的事情。”

He added that he was particularly pleased that, like the Turing Institute, MIT would investigate the social and ethical implications of AI alongside its scientific and technological development. “If we are going to apply AI across society, we need to think hard about the ethical issues.”

他补充说，他特别高兴的是，像图灵研究所一样，MIT在AI的科学与技术发展之外还将研究它对社会与伦理的影响。“如果要把AI应用到整个社会，那么我们就需要认真思考伦理问题。”