Artificial Intelligence is one of the most exciting fields of growing technology. There are incredible advancements in AI happening on a regular basis. Many of the top universities around the world are involving themselves in some very interesting and exciting AI projects. These projects cover a pretty wide range of subjects and objectives, but they all aim to make very interesting and exciting advancements in the field of artificial intelligence. Universities ranging from the University of Washington to Carnegie Mellon to Harvard and Oxford are putting their best and brightest minds towards some very intriguing AI projects. There are a great deal of exciting and interesting artificial intelligence projects happening at universities all over the world, and these are the 5 most exciting projects.

Decision-Theoretic Control for Crowdsourced Workflows – University of Washington Paul G Allen School

Paul G Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering is home to a variety of interesting AI projects. The Decision-Theoretic Control for Crowdsourced Workflows is an exciting project that looks at the decision making process behind crowdsourced work and looks to automate it. Crowd sourced workflows are ran by companies through services like Amazon’s mechanical turk program. Companies assign small chunks of a project to a web of individuals who each check parts of the others work, ultimately resulting in a finished project that many different individuals have had a hand in. However, one of the challenges for companies employing this type of work is that it can be somewhat difficult and time consuming to create the broader plan for completing these projects. There are a lot of moving parts involved in a project with so many contributors so it can be challenging to align the web of contributors in a way that is effective towards completing the project. However, this project aims to develop an artificial intelligence that can delegate these tasks by itself, which would be a major innovation in this field.

4CAPS – Carnegie Mellon

4CAPS is a project that has been developed by Carnegie Mellon. It is a cognitive architecture that is able to account for both traditional behavioral data as well as the results of neuroimaging studies. It is an advanced cognitive architecture that is a hybrid architecture because it combines connectionist and symbolic mechanisms in its environment. It is the successor of the original CAPS architecture developed in 1982.

Aries – University of Memphis Institute for Intelligent Systems

Aries is a very exciting education related project being developed by the University of Memphis Institute for Intelligent Systems. It is an educational environment where two animated pedagogical agents hold talks with human students about various science subjects. This program is meant to engage with students and help them learn more about various parts of their science class, and will be integrated into electronic textbooks in a game like environment. This is a project with a lot of exciting possibilities in the field of education.

Harvard / IARPA Brain Study

Harvard University is studying how AI can be made to think more efficiently and faster, like human brains. They have received 28 million dollars in funding from the Intelligence Advanced Projects Activity, or IARPA, to study this subject. The general goal of this study is to understand how artificial intelligence can gain the efficiencies of the human brain which does not need to spend nearly as much time on processing subjects as artificial intelligence does. This will ideally create a synthesis between the benefits of human brains and artificial intelligence with the functionality and efficiency of the human brain and the ability for processing a great volume of data that AI benefits from.

Oxford University / Google Deepmind

Some of the top researchers from Oxford University have been hired by Google to work with their Deepmind team, which focuses on artificial intelligence projects. They will be working on image recognition and natural langue understanding. This is part of a broader partnership between Oxford and Deepmind, which has lots of exciting potential.

Overall, there are a great deal of exciting artificial intelligence projects happening at Universities around the world. From promising educational tools to in depth studies to AI planning projects, University groups are working on many different AI projects that have the potential greatly impact their associated fields.

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In a discussion on the future of computer science at Harvard University, former Microsoft CEO and alumni of Harvard- Steve Ballmer AB ’77, joined Harvard President Drew Faust and Cherry Murray, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), to discuss the topic. Ballmer expressed his excitement about the ability of computer and IT to process huge amounts of data not only to see patterns but to suggest actions and understand human intent.

His emphasis on the potential of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in being able to shape our own future was evident throughout the discussion.

With Ballmer’s undisclosed donation, Harvard will see a 50 percent expansion in the size of the computer science department, with the ladder- track faculty positions going up from twenty four to thirty six.

In a brief telephone interview with the Harvard magazine on November 12, Ballmer emphasized the importance of strengthening the faculty for “the next era of computing,” in fields such as machine learning and computational theory, which are key to propelling “the next wave of innovation and research.” Expanding the faculty cohort from 24 to 36 would “enable the Harvard computer-science department really to be built for the future” computing era.

Ballmer stated that “CS at Harvard today is small, but excellent. It already punches above its weight. With depth in systems, data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, it is focused on high-impact specialties that are literally changing the world. With this infusion of talent, I believe Harvard will be one of the preeminent, modern CS programs.” He stated that Leadership in computer science is fundamental to Harvard remaining the leading institution in education.

He further added that “CS is the operating system of innovation at Harvard, the basic theory being that CS and CS technology is going to power so much innovation”. Ballmer added that Harvard has a unique opportunity. Whether it’s biology, history, public policy, or medicine, the ability to help people gets more done through CS is an area where Harvard has the resources and the perspective across these disciplines to be a leader.” He pointed out how big data techniques can now be used to find out how civilizations evolved.

David Parkes, Colony professor of CS and SEAS’s stated that an area of particular focus for recruiting new colleagues would encompass artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science—frontiers that he described as holding the potential to transform how people interact with the world. Evolving techniques will enable scientists to engage with and make sense of enormous sets of data, and will help policymakers understand social problems and devise more effective responses.

Harvard’s professional-school breadth strengthens the potential for breakthroughs in medicine, law, and design, among other fields, he said. The department will also seek to grow in fundamental computer-science research, probing the limits of what is possible and what is not; as an analogy, he noted, “A cell is a computer,” processing and sharing information in accord with laws that apply universally.

He stated that Harvard is not only making great technical progress in terms of development algorithms that can behave intelligently but we are also at a point where people are asking deep intelligent questions about their impact on society, workplace and mankind.

Expressing no qualms about the various issues being brought up about scientists forging ahead in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Ballmer said that “At the end of the day, will we have to have other innovations that protect people from privacy and security [problems]? Of course we will… I don’t think being afraid of any innovation is a good thing.”

Ballmer punctuated the potential of entrepreneurial innovation at Harvard due to its interdisciplinary learning approach. In a recent interview with the Harvard magazine, Ballmer mentioned the developmental plans in Allston. The given SEAS’s future facilities there, an emerging entrepreneurial presence nearby, and the longer-term planned development of an “enterprise” campus on Harvard-owned property at Allston Landing, he saw a “phenomenal feedback loop” taking shape, where academic research creates ideas that can be brought to market, and entrepreneurs find the trained talent they need to proceed.

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(Image Credit: Will Hart)