What’s going on in Google? Clearly not content with only owning its private robot army, the search giant has announced it will purchase DeepMind, a London-based artificial intelligence start-up for a cool $500 million. Should we all be afraid of what Google is cooking up for us? According to reports, Googe beat giants like Facebook to the deal, with Zuckerberg trying to purchase DeepMind last year.
This deal is another step in Google’s efforts to become the world leader in artificial intelligence and robotics with other major tech companies as they all try to gain business advantages by focusing on deep learning. For example, Facebook recently hired NYU Professor Yann LeCunn to lead its new artificial intelligence lab and Yahoo recently acquired photo analysis startup LookFlow to lead its new deep learning group.
So What is DeepMind Actually?
Very little has been publicly shared regarding exactly what DeepMind does, adding to the mystery surrounding Google’s artificial intelligence aspirations. On the DeepMind website, the company says its mission is to combine “the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.”
Google’s top secret department “Google X” bought a reported eight companies in 2013, all for an undisclosed prices. Most of the companies are in the robotics field, manufacturing cameras, wheels and even robotic arms. Altogether Google has acquired 128 companies since its first deal in 2001.
Alongside the acquisition, Google announced that it was also establishing an ethics board to ensure the potentially controversial AI technology can’t be abused. Speaking of which, it remains unclear exactly what Google plans to do with DeepMind now that it has it, and how its staff will integrate into the search company’s structure.
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