Commonwealth Bank has opened yet another avenue in its progression of AI, funding a new centre and research partnership with the University of Adelaide.
Image credit: The University of Adelaide.
The CommBank Centre for Foundational AI will be based at Lot Fourteen, an innovation precinct built on the site of a former hospital.
The university said the agreement with CBA is for five years and “could unlock further improvements to fraud detection to keep customers’ money and data safe while identifying new ways to create personalised and secure banking experiences.”
The bank’s CIO for technology and distinguished engineer Brendan Hopper said CBA would work with the university’s existing Australian Institute of Machine Learning as part of the partnership.
This was backed by deputy vice-chancellor and vice-president of research at the university, Professor Anton Middelberg, who said that “researchers from the Australian Institute for Machine Learning will work with experts from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to apply the latest techniques in artificial intelligence.”
“Their work will be of direct benefit to people’s lives by improving financial systems,” Middelberg said.
The intent isn’t to limit the work of the centre to the finance sector but to explore AI for other industries as well.
The university said the centre would be populated by “hybrid appointments” – essentially, researchers that “combine academic rigour with industry relevance.”
Australian universities in general have looked to set up research partnerships with industry to test the extent to which research is applicable in business environments, and may – for example – be commercialised.
The establishment of the centre comes only a day after CBA said it is setting up an “AI factory” with AWS that will help it progress use cases for a different type of AI – generative AI.
The bank has other diversified arrangements aimed at bringing AI into its operations, including a partnership with H2O.ai.