Microsoft creates an AI research lab to challenge Google and DeepMind

#Microsoft has created a new research lab with a focus on developing general-purpose artificial intelligence technology, the company revealed today. The lab will be located at Microsoft’s Redmond HQ, and will include a team of more than 100 scientists working on #AI, from areas including natural language processing, learning and perception systems. The aim of building a general-purpose AI that can effectively address problems in a range of different areas, rather than focusing on a single specific task, is one that many leading technology companies are pursuing. Most notably, perhaps, #Google is attempting to tackle the challenge of more generalized AI via both its own #GoogleBrain project and through efforts at #DeepMind, the company it acquired in 2014, which is now its own subsidiary under mutual parent company #Alphabet. #Microsoft ’s new endeavor is called Microsoft Research AI, and it’ll pull from existing AI expertise at the company, as well as pursue new hires, including experts in related fields such as cognitive psychology to flesh out the team, Bloomberg says. The lab will also formally partner with MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. Seeking academic-private tie-ups is not at all unusual in AI development — Microsoft, Google and others, including Uber, have made commitments to academic institutions in order to help secure talent and pipeline for students with related expertise. In addition to the research lab, Microsoft is going to create an AI ethics oversight panel that will act in an advisory capacity across the company, which is also very much in keeping with industry trends. #Microsoft previously signed on to work with #DeepMind, #Amazon, #Google, #Facebook and #IBM on a cross-company partnership for ethical #AI development, and Google and #DeepMind also have their own AI ethics board.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/12/microsoft-creates-an-ai-research-lab-to-challenge-google-and-deepmind/

Google DeepMind’s Untrendy Play to Make the Blockchain Actually Useful

FOR SILICON VALLEY, the headline was sweet nectar: #Google #DeepMind, the world’s hottest artificial intelligence lab, embraces the #blockchain, the endlessly fascinating idea at the heart of the bitcoin digital currency. But the buzzwords bely the reality. The lab’s re-imagining of the blockchain has very little to do with AI—or the blockchain, for that matter. If you want AI crossed with the blockchain, try wrapping your head around Numerai, the world’s strangest hedge fund. To DeepMind’s credit, its new project depends less on trendy ideas than an apparent desire to solve a real problem in the real world—one that involves the most private and personal information.

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/google-deepminds-untrendy-blockchain-play-make-actually-useful/

Google has found a business model for its most advanced artificial intelligence

Two years ago, #Google spent over half a billion dollars for the tiny artificial intelligence startup #DeepMind. Since then, the unit has walloped Atari video games and beaten an impossible board game. Impressive stuff, that. But those AI demonstrations have yet to spell actual revenue. Until now — although the efforts are helping Google save money on its most expensive part. DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis told Bloomberg that his unit recently began applying its advanced AI to Google’s data centers, finding ways to reduce the company’s sizable energy bill. Google started using machine learning for its data centers two years ago, searching for ways to reduce costs for one of the company’s top expenses. A month ago, it aimed the more specialized AI tools from DeepMind at the problem of cooling these server farms. That cut the energy needed for cooling by 40 percent, the company said.

http://www.recode.net/2016/7/19/12231776/google-energy-deepmind-ai-data-centers