UW-Milwaukee Microsoft AI lab; Microsoft's first to focus on manufacturing

Inside UWM's cutting-edge Microsoft AI lab

Microsoft has six AI Co-Innovation Labs across the entire world, and the seventh will soon come to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee is soon getting a cutting-edge lab. Microsoft is bringing it to the city, and it promises to help local businesses. Only two other places in the country have one.

Microsoft has six AI Co-Innovation Labs across the entire world.

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The seventh will come to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It will be the only Microsoft AL Co-Innovation Lab focused on manufacturing and the only Microsoft AI lab housed at a college.

UWM Connected Systems Institute

"You look at the region, there’s a high density of manufacturing companies here," said Joe Hamann, executive director of the Connected Systems Institute at UWM.

The AI Co-Innovation Lab will be in that UWM institute, which sits in the center of the campus.

It was set up in 2019, with help from Rockwell Automation, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and Microsoft. It has already been helping local manufacturers, which is work that will grow with the new AI lab.

"Talking to manufacturers, to make sure we understand what are the challenges they are having in their operations and then how can we use technology here at CSI," Hamann said. "One of these technologies happens to be artificial intelligence. How can we use that technology to solve their business problems? How can we use an AI tool, like ChatGPT, to accelerate maintenance, reduce downtime, get that manufacturer up and running faster, so that it saves them on cost?"

UWM Connected Systems Institute

Hamann said it won’t just help businesses.

"We’re starting with industry problems and now we’re using technology, not as a magic wand, but we’re focusing on technology as a solution to problems, and then we’re enabling students to learn, to help industry solve those problems," he said. "[It provides] opportunities for students to learn and get real experienced, working with industry to understand AI application in manufacturing, [and a] phenomenal opportunity for faculty to do research that connects to real industry problem statements."

Microsoft will pay for five positions at the UWM lab – that’s two Microsoft employees and three contractors.

UWM Connected Systems Institute

"Now there can be collaboration with students to come and learn," Hamann said. "What a better set of experiences for a student than to come work in an environment where there’s going to be 60 unique industry partners coming in to learn about AI in manufacturing that they can use to solve a problem in their operation?"

The lab will have the goal to work with 60 different companies every single year.

"This is really exciting stuff," said Abhi Roop Tokala, a UWM biomedical engineering student. "Data is everywhere, but making sense of this data is where the AI would help. So AI is not this super-intelligence but rather, just an excel spreadsheet, I guess, running the same stuff over and over again and doing it in a more different, more powerful manner."

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The connections between UWM and Microsoft are deep: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earned his master’s degree in computer science from the university. Microsoft's president, Brad Smith, grew up in Wisconsin.

Smith said this project will be part of training people for the jobs of the future as well as solving pressing problems.

"Businesses can come in, manufacturers can come in," he said. "And we’ll work with them to design the future of manufacturing, using AI for things like quality control, preventative maintenance and then match that with the skills that people will need to use that technology as part of their jobs."