Oxford-led BOLD Lab targets more efficient, human-centred AI

The investment from AMD will support the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery Lab (BOLD), a new AI research centre led by the University of Oxford.

BOLD brings together leading researchers from Oxford, UCL, and Imperial College London to develop fundamental advances in AI systems.

Jakob Foerster, associate professor in engineering science at the University of Oxford, said: “BOLD aims to advance a more open, efficient and human-centred path for AI through collaboration between academia and industry.

“Working with AMD, the University of Oxford would combine world-leading research with computing technology to test ideas, learn quickly and translate breakthroughs into applications.”

AMD would explore providing up to 5 million pounds in compute resources for BOLD researchers during the 18 months following the lab’s launch.

The collaboration would explore compute access, open-source software development, and model optimisation.

BOLD researchers plan to investigate model training techniques beyond backpropagation, explore multiagent systems, and work on adaptive physical AI.

Thomas Zacharia, senior vice president of global public sector and strategic partnerships at AMD, said: “Through our memorandum of understanding with the BOLD lab, AMD is exploring bringing together advanced computing, open software and technical expertise to help researchers pursue ambitious new frontiers in AI.

“By expanding access to compute and supporting open academic research, our aim would be to help BOLD researchers accelerate experimentation and contribute to the U.K.’s leadership in AI innovation and scientific discovery.”

AMD would work with BOLD researchers across the AI technology stack, offering support through its open software ecosystem.

The company would also help BOLD researchers publish research software, benchmarks, and evaluation tools, while contributing performance improvements to the wider open-source community.

Led by Professor Foerster and housed within the University of Oxford’s engineering science department, the lab aims to rethink how AI systems learn.

With support from AMD, the team intends to develop AI that can work alongside humans and operate in complex physical environments.

The partnership adds to AMD’s existing work with other UK research institutions, including the University of Cambridge on the Zenith supercomputer and Sovereign AI Innovation Lab, and Imperial College London on high-performance computing.

Oxford University continues to lead in research commercialisation through its innovation arm, having created more than 300 spinout companies since 1988, one third of which were established in the past five years.

The university contributed around £16.9 billion to the UK economy in 2021/22, supporting more than 90,400 full-time jobs.

The engineering science department alone secured around £70 million in research grant income, covering a portfolio of 700 projects.