Japanese car manufacturing giant Toyota has set aside $1 billion to build an artificial intelligence research center in California in the next five years.
Toyota will register it as a new company named Toyota Research Institute. The first AI lab would be built next to Stanford University and the next near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, reports the New York Times.
To oversee the facility, anticipated to be one of the largest research labs in Silicon Valley, is Gill Pratt, a roboticist, Toyota announced on Friday at a news conference in Tokyo. Pratt is the former program manager of the Defense Sciences Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Pratt says the objective of Toyota is "to support older people in homes, not just outdoors, with robotics, as well as making cars free of accidents and having everyone driving regardless of ability," quotes AP. He adds the facility would have 200 workers focusing on a wide range of robotics and AI research, reports Gizmondo.
The AI lab aims to bridge basic science and commercial engineering. Toyota's planned entry into the R&D scene in Silicon Valley comes a year after Microsoft shuttered in 2014 the satellite lab of its Microsoft Research division in the tech valley and laid off 75 researchers.