The United States and Japan have announced a research partnership agreement to advance artificial intelligence capabilities. Top officials from the two countries sealed the AI teaming plan with a signing ceremony at the U.S. Department of Commerce Research Library in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
According to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the latest collaborative effort reflects the two sides’ commitment to developing safe and responsible AI.
“Today’s announcement will build on President Biden and Prime Minister [Fumio] Kishida’s commitment to advance U.S.-Japan science and technology cooperation to develop a talented global workforce and strengthen economic security in both countries,” Raimondo said.
The joint research involves work between the University of Washington and the University of Tsukuba, focusing on the link between AI-related research and workforce development.
Specifically, the UW’s College of Engineering will investigate AI-related research advancements in entrepreneurship and social implementation.
GeekWire reported that the two universities will receive equal funding to support research awards, postdoctoral and doctoral students, an undergraduate summer research program, and an entrepreneurship boot camp program.
Their research work would cover health care, robotics, climate change and atmospheric science.
Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University and Keio University researchers will focus on multimodal and multilingual learning, embodied AI or AI for robots, autonomous AI symbiosis with humans, life sciences and AI for scientific discovery.
Amazon, Arm and Softbank Group, Microsoft, Nvidia and a consortium of nine Japanese companies will provide $110 million to support the project.
