UTS opens research centre dedicated to artificial intelligence

The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has opened a new Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI), expected to focus on creating intelligent machines with a greater capacity for perception, learning, and reasoning.

UTS said the new centre will work on developments in machine learning, social robotics, business intelligence, computer vision, computational intelligence, brain computer interface, data science, and information systems.

"Establishing this centre gives us the opportunity to explore beyond core technology and into the impact of our discoveries," UTS deputy vice-chancellor research professor Glenn Wightwick said.

"This includes the ethics of artificial intelligence, such as interrogating the way it will impact the future of work; and moral decisions we will need to explore around developments such as driverless vehicles."

The CAI will comprise of five labs focused on making interconnections between collected data, behaviour and knowledge exchange, meeting the needs of organisations for advanced knowledge of behaviours, and accurate analysis of big data, which the university expects will help identify and result in the development of solutions for global problems.

The first lab, Decision Systems and E-Service Intelligence, is expected to develop theories, methods, and software systems for the organisation to better understand big data.

The Computational Intelligence and Brain Computer Interface Lab will focus on human performance augmentation and human machine autonomous systems; while the Magic Lab will work on social robotics, and was described by UTS as "trans-disciplinary research into disruptive technology".

The Knowledge Infrastructure lab will focus computational intelligence that can examine, extract, and transport knowledge; and the fifth lab, Data Science and Knowledge Discovery, will zone in on data mining, machine learning, and computer vision, UTS explained.

The centre's research director is ARC Future Fellow Professor Ivor Tsang, whose research expertise is machine learning on big data.

The CAI has also scooped up a number of researchers focused on AI, with four distinguished AI professors, four members of the ARC College of Experts, and 100 PhD students working out of the university's new centre.

UTS is also focused on quantum computing, launching its Centre for Quantum Software and Information (CQSI) in December, solely dedicated to the development of the software and information processing infrastructure required to run applications at quantum scale.

The CQSI builds upon the work undertaken by its forerunner, the Centre for Quantum Computation and Intelligent Systems, which focused on the development of theoretical foundations, innovative technology, and practical systems for quantum computing.

Similar to the CAI, the CQSI has five research programs: Algorithms and complexity, artificial intelligence applications, programming and verification, intermediate quantum computing and architectures, and information theory and security.