SHENZHEN, March 1 (Xinhua) -- SenseTime, a leading Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company, said Wednesday it has joined an initiative launched by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to advance research on human and machine intelligence.

The collaboration aims to open up new avenues of discovery in areas such as computer vision, human-intelligence-inspired algorithms, medical imaging, and robotics, according to SenseTime.

SenseTime is the first company to join the initiative "Intelligence Quest" since its launch last month.

"As the largest provider of AI algorithms in China, we are very excited to work with MIT to lead global AI research into the next frontier," said Xu Li, CEO of SenseTime.

"After years of development, China has become a hub for AI research in terms of talent, data, and applications scenarios," Xu added.

Valued at more than 3 billion U.S. dollars, SenseTime has developed a sophisticated proprietary deep learning platform and built applications for multiple industries.

The company is currently working on developing autonomous driving, intelligent medical treatment, and deep learning hardware optimization.