Sony has announced it will invest in Cogitai, a US startup, to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) that will learn autonomously and can be applied later to consumer electronics.
Sony is expected to acquire a 20 per cent stake in Cogitai for an undisclosed amount, according to Japanese economic newspapers, and aims to market the new products within three years.
The partnership seeks to develop an AI technology that "empowers machines to learn continually from interaction with the real world, enabling everyday things that sense and act to get smarter, more skilled, and more knowledgeable with experience," according to a statement by Sony.
An example of a product with an ability to learn autonomously from interactions with users and other elements of the environment could be a camera, which over time is able to suggest practical and innovative solutions to the photographer.
Both companies believe the present limitations in AI technology can be overcome by combining "reinforcement learning" with the newer "deep learning."
The first, developed in the 1980s from theories of behavioural psychology, enables a complex system to make decisions, while the second gives autonomy to a machine to learn.
Sony was a pioneer in AI and launched the Aibo robot dog but decided to close its robot wing in 2006 under the restructuring of its consumer electronics division, although it has continued to study AI technologies.
Cogitai was founded in September 2015 in California by three American AI researchers.
