AI and the Academy

In a Press Release MIT announces that it has entered into a $240 million dollar effort with IBM to establish a joint AI Laboratory. They state:

IBM and MIT today announced that IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab in partnership with MIT. The lab will carry out fundamental artificial intelligence (AI) research and seek to propel scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI. The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software, and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas; increase AI’s impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity; and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society. IBM’s $240 million investment in the lab will support research by IBM and MIT scientists. The new lab will be one of the largest long-term university-industry AI collaborations to date, mobilizing the talent of more than 100 AI scientists, professors, and students to pursue joint research at IBM's Research Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts — co-located with the IBM Watson Health and IBM Security headquarters in Kendall Square — and on the neighboring MIT campus.

This comes after much criticism of the IBM Watson venture as more hype than reality. But it does raise many major questions.

1. MIT is an academic institution and what research which is done there has always been of a public nature. MIT Lincoln Lab is an exception but that Lab, as was the Draper Instrumentation Lab, considered an off shoot, not on the main campus and not an academic department.

2. IBM one would assume is investing $240 million and expects a return to shareholder value. That must mean that IBM has not only first dibs on whatever is developed but also there is some form of proprietary ownership which seems to be antagonistic to normal academic freedom.

3. If one does a study in this "Lab" then can one take what expertise one has created and take it to a competitor?

4. Why IBM. Is IBM desperate to get something out of Watson that they would dump a quarter of a billion into this effort? Motives count.

5. MIT was a Land Grant School, and as a result had an obligation to support US industry and interests as a goal if not a primary goal. Does this enhance or subrogate that goal?

Needless to say this makes for good PR but is it good science and engineering? I wonder.