San Francisco, Jan 29 (IANS) Amazon and University of Southern California (USC) on Friday collaboratively announced that they are creating a joint research center focused on development of new approaches to Machine Learning (ML) privacy, security and trustworthiness.

The "Center for Secure and Trusted Machine Learning", which will be housed at the USC's Viterbi School of Engineering, will support USC and Amazon researchers in the development of novel approaches to privacy-preserving ML solutions.

"Developing solutions to protect our data requires cutting edge advances. I am pleased the USC-Amazon center will build a platform based on a shared commitment to advancing understanding and developing solutions," Charles F. Zukoski from the varsity in the US, said in a statement.

The expectation is that the center will unleash a new line of fundamental research on privacy and security aspects of ML -- a timely and critical effort given the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across all aspects of society from education to finance, transportation, healthcare and many others.

Each year, the center will provide support for research projects focused on the development of new methodologies for secure and privacy-preserving ML solutions that can scale to support billions of users.

In addition, the center will provide annual fellowships to talented doctoral students working in this research area, enabling them to advance research frontiers. Fellowship recipients will be named as Amazon ML Fellows in recognition of their promise and achievements.

These fellowships will give students greater understanding of industry and solution-driven research.

Amazon and the university will also host annual workshops and training and recruiting events for university and high school students.