The University of Technology Sydney launched a new research institute to develop the nation’s use of artificial intelligence for economic and social advancement.

The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII) will oversee what the university is calling the country’s largest AI research program, with both applied and fundamental research using AI and associated technologies such as the internet of things (IoT).

Researchers at the institute are set to work across a number of sectors including healthcare, financial services, transport, education, and defence.

The facility will be led by Distinguished Professor Jie Lu, an expert in “fuzzy” machine learning - where algorithms are intended to function more like humans with an ability to evaluate more nuanced possibilities - and its impact on data-driven decision making.

Eight separate labs exist within the institute, with focus areas covering computational intelligence and deep learning, blockchain, bioinformatics, software and security.

Lu was awarded $3.3 million by the Australian Research Council to lead one of the major projects at the AAII concerning autonomous learning capabilities for decision-making in complex situations, and to improve the scale and focus of machine learning-based research into decision-making and its applications.

“We aim to create a novel research direction – autonomous machine learning for data-driven decision-making from big data that supports decision-making in complex situations,” Lu said in a statement.

“This project will give a new set of theories, methodologies and algorithms to learn autonomously from data, and assist machine-learning to effectively handle tremendous uncertainties in data.”

Together with industry partners from across the healthcare, transportation, agriculture and logistics transportation sectors, the project will look at intelligent learning systems using large data domains, data streams and agent environments.

“This dedicated Institute will further enhance UTS' - and Australia’s - reputation in AI, particularly machine learning, which is having such a transformational impact on many areas of science, the economy and society,” Lu added.

“AAII will build world-class AI research capacity in Australia and globally through links with national and international researchers, research communities and industries in machine learning and decision support systems.”