The Audi.JKU Deep Learning Center will research and promote artificial intelligence in automobiles.

As car manufacturers and tech firms race to develop the best self-driving automobiles, German brand Audi is taking strides to push its  self-driving car in the market by 2020. Partnering with Johannes Kepler University Of Linz (JKU), the manufacturer has roped in Professor Sepp Hochreiter, one of Europe’s leading experts in artificial intelligence (AI) to establish the Audi.JKU Deep Learning Center. Hochreiter has had a hand in developing long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, widely used in speech recognition software like Google Translate, Siri, and Amazon Alexa.

Tapping into the professor's expertise in deep-learning technologies, the center will conduct joint research in autonomous driving using AI to develop automobiles of the future. The institute will also begin research into the AI’s response to complex traffic situations, as well as its use in vehicle sensors.

“The application of AI has enormous potential for self‑driving cars, not just for speech recognition, but even for predicting passengers’ intentions and needs, and reacting to them,” shares professor Hochreiter in a release.

Having announced a partnership with visual computing tech firm Nvidia earlier this year, Audi is definitely stepping up their game, especially in the piloted driving market, and we can't wait to see what 2020 brings.