Competence centres for AI and machine learning to open in Germany

Tubingen is to receive a competence centre for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This will make it one of four locations at which Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research plans to pool scientific projects in AI.

The Tubingen AI Centre will provide research groups at the University and at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems with a place to develop learning systems. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research will sponsor the centre with some 6.6m Euros for an initial four years. Three other AI centres are to be set up in Berlin, Dortmund and Munich. “We are delighted with the sponsorship for the Tubingen AI centre; we see a major opportunity to shape the future of artificial intelligence,” said coordinator Matthias Bethge, Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning at the University of Tubingen. Researchers at the centre will work on new concepts and principles to create more robust learning systems. “Understanding intelligence so that we can create artificially intelligent systems is a grand scientific challenge with huge potential benefits to society”, said Michael Black, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. “While achieving this requires continued basic research, there are already great successes with widespread applications. This centre bridges foundational and translational research, which is a central concept of the Cyber Valley initiative. This further shows the leadership role that the Tubingen-Stuttgart region is playing in advancing AI research within Germany and the world.” The centre will also investigate possible misuses of AI technologies. The new centre is part of the major Cyber Valley initiative in the Stuttgart-Tubingen region, where many partners in academia and industry have joined forces to work in the area of artificial intelligence. The University of Tubingen will be founding at least five new professorships and many junior research groups, as well as participating in the training of doctoral candidates at the International Max Planck Research School ‘Intelligent Systems’.