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It joins BMW, Bosch, Daimler, Facebook and Porsche in backing a
German initiative launched last year and focused on areas such
as robotics, machine learning and computer vision.
The research center will be located adjacent to the Max Planck
Institute for Intelligent Systems and draw on the expertise of
two of its experts, Prof. Bernhard Schoelkopf and Prof. Michael
J. Black.
Schoelkopf is co-inventor of technology that enables computers
to understand causality.
"It's at the heart of every decision taken by machine learning,"
said Ralf Herbrich, Amazon's director of machine learning.
Black is a specialist in computer vision and founder of Body
Labs, a company acquired by Amazon that has developed AI to
analyze three-dimensional human body motion and shape.
With an understanding of causality, artificial intelligence
systems can predict customer behavior in response to automated
decisions, Herbrich told Reuters, noting this can be used to
order online search results to improve the user experience.
Amazon said it would also contribute 1.25 million euros ($1.5
million) to Germany's Cyber Valley collaborative research effort
and a further 420,000 euros ($500,000) to fund individual
research awards.
(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; editing by Jason Neely)
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