Google has taken another major step towards building
intelligent machines or robots in the coming times. After acquiring Boston
Dynamics last year, the search giant i.e. Google has reportedly acquired an
artificial intelligence startup called DeepMind. Though neither of the
companies has released an official statement but the deal is said to be worth
somewhere around $500 million.
DeepMind is a London-based startup founded three years ago by
Demis Hassabis — a former child prodigy in chess - Jaan Tallin, the one who had
a hand in developing Skype and Kazaa, researchers Shane Legg and Mustafa
Suleyman. Not much information is known about the company for now, but the
website’s landing page does describe the startup as “a cutting edge artificial
intelligence company to build general-purpose learning algorithms for
simulations, e-commerce and various games.”
Also see : Google bought nesT
This is the latest move by Google to fill out its roster of
artificial intelligence experts and according to Re/code; the acquisition was
reportedly led by Google CEO Larry Page. If all three of the DeepMind’s
founders work for Google they will join inventor, entrepreneur, author, and
futurist Ray Kurzwell who was hired in 2012 as a director of engineering
focused on machine learning and language processing.
Google has been particularly focused on advances in
artificial intelligence recently. Scientists who are working on the company's
secretive X Labs lab created a neural network for machine learning by
connecting 16000 computer processors and then unleashed it on the Internet. The
network's performance excelled researchers' expectations by doubling its
accuracy rate in identifying objects from a long list of 20,000 items.
Re/code reports that Founders Fund and Horizons Ventures are
both major investors in the startup. According to the LinkedIn profiles, the
DeepMind was started about three years ago.
Google’s hiring of DeepMind will help it compete against
other major tech companies as they all try to gain business advantages by
focusing on deep learning. For instance, Facebook recently hired NYU professor
Yann LeCunn to lead its new artificial intelligence lab and IBM’s Watson’s
supercomputer is now working on deep learning.
Let’s see now what Google does with DeepMind.
Author : Iman Majeed
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