Google has bought artificial intelligence firm DeepMind Technologies for a reported £240m, as the internet giant continues to expand into marketing automation and big data. Google has been improving the company’s AI expertise and recently bought military robot maker Boston Dynamics, among other robotics companies. DeepMind has become a major independent force in development of […]
Google has bought artificial intelligence firm DeepMind Technologies for a reported £240m, as the internet giant continues to expand into marketing automation and big data.
Google has been improving the company’s AI expertise and recently bought military robot maker Boston Dynamics, among other robotics companies.
DeepMind has become a major independent force in development of AI and currently develops algorithms for games, simulations and online commerce sites.
The DeepmMind deal was first revealed by tech site re/code and it said Google CEO Larry Page led negotiations.
Last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned delegates at the World Economic Forum that technological innovation may wipe out whole swathes of jobs.
He said that many roles are being automated by IT systems and it would become one of the biggest global issues in the next two to three decades.
DeepMind’s website is just a single page stating it combines “the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms”.
It was founded by 37-year-old Demis Hassabis in late 2010. DeepMind says it is “supported by some of the most iconic technology entrepreneurs and investors of the past decade”.
The founder was a child chess prodigy and video game designer by the age of 16, who later went on study computer science at Cambridge and gained a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.
The news follows a similar effort by Facebook, which recently unveiled a partnership with New York University last year for a new centre for artificial intelligence, aimed at harnessing the social network’s vast resource of data.
Read the original report from Re/code here
