Talent has begun leaking from DeepMind in recent months

If DeepMind is on your CV, you could walk into most tech companies and be offered a job on the spot with a six-figure salary. The firm is full of in-demand talent and its CEO once bragged that no employees had ever left.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2016, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said:

“We are able to literally get the best scientists from each country each year. So we’ll have, say, the person that won the Physics Olympiad in Poland, the person who got the top...

8 January 2019 | Deep Learning

AI beats AI: AlphaZero becomes the best game player in history

DeepMind – a UK-based subsidiary of Google’s parent organisation Alphabet – has beat rival AI records with AlphaZero. The AI, introduced by DeepMind in a research published in Science on 6th November 2018, was put against three of the world’s most complex board games and their current AI record holders. This included world-champion chess AI Stockfish, DeepMind’s very own AlphaGo Zero – known as the best Go player in history – and elmo, winner of the 27th annual World Computer...

10 December 2018 | Gaming

Google funding ‘good’ AI may help some forget that military fiasco

Google has launched an initiative to fund ‘good’ AI which may help some forget about the questionable military contracts it was involved with. The new initiative, called AI for Social Good, is a joint effort between the company’s philanthropic subsidiary Google.org and its own experts. Kicking off the initiative is the ‘AI Impact Challenge’ which is set to provide $25 million in funding to non-profits while providing access to Google’s vast resources. As part of the initiative,...

30 October 2018 | Google

Harvard and Google partner on earthquake aftershock-predicting AI

Harvard University has partnered with Google to create a potentially life-saving AI that can predict where aftershocks will hit following an earthquake. The AI uses data from 199 earthquakes and the more than 130,000 aftershocks. Manual predictions are possible but they consume time and have proven to be less accurate than those of the AI. Many believe aftershocks occur within a short timeframe of an earthquake. The AI, however, can predict aftershocks up to a year after the initial...

30 August 2018 | Google

Google improves AI model training by open-sourcing framework

Google is helping researchers seeking to train AI models by open-sourcing a reinforcement learning framework used for its own projects. Reinforcement learning has been used for some of the most impressive AI demonstrations thus far, including those which beat human professional gamers at Alpha Go and Dota 2. Google subsidiary DeepMind uses it for its Deep Q-Network (DQN). Building a reinforcement learning framework takes both time and significant resources. For AI to reach its full potential,...

28 August 2018 | Google

Google promises its call center AI is not designed to replace humans

Not content with its impressive(ly creepy) Duplex demo, Google promises it’s not wanting to replace call centers with its latest AI demonstration. During the Google Cloud Next 18 conference, Google Chief AI Scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li demonstrated a new AI system called Google Contact Center AI which – much like Duplex – sounded incredibly natural in its responses to human queries. Google seems to have learned its lesson from its Duplex demonstration and wanted to iterate that it’s not...

25 July 2018 | Google

Google’s old AI boss is now at Apple in charge of Siri and ML efforts

Google's poached head of search and artificial intelligence is now leading Siri and machine learning efforts at rival Apple. John Giannandrea joined Google back in 2010 before stepping down in April this year. He announced he'd been hired by Apple the following day, but in what position had been a mystery until now. It was obvious Giannandrea would be stepping into a big role at Apple, and that's exactly what's happened. AI is becoming increasingly important and an area where Google is seen...

11 July 2018 | Apple

Don’t Be Evil: Google publishes its AI ethical principles following backlash

google ai ethical principles dont be evil

Following the backlash over its Project Maven plans to develop AI for the US military, Google has since withdrawn and published its ethical principles. Project Maven was Google’s collaboration with the US Department of Defense. In March, leaks indicated that Google supplied AI technology to the Pentagon to help analyse drone footage. The following month, over 4,000 employees signed a petition demanding that Google's management cease work on Project Maven and promise to never again...

8 June 2018 | Ethics

Bill forcing AI bots to reveal themselves faces EFF opposition

A bill that would force AI bots to reveal themselves as not being human is facing opposition from the EFF over free speech concerns. Many were slightly disturbed by Google’s demo of its Duplex AI conducting a phone call and the other participant being unaware they weren’t speaking to a human. Less than a month later, Microsoft demonstrated it also had the same capabilities. There are clearly big changes ahead in how we interact, and not everyone is going to be happy speaking to a robot...

24 May 2018 | Bots

Watch out Google Duplex, Microsoft also has a chatty AI

Not content with being outdone by Google’s impressive (yet creepy) Duplex demo, Microsoft has shown it also has an AI capable of making human-like phone calls. The company first launched its XiaoIce project back in August 2017. In April, Microsoft said it had achieved full duplexing — the ability to speak and listen at the same time, similar to humans. Microsoft’s announcement was made before Google’s demonstration earlier this month but, unlike Google, the company had nothing to show...

23 May 2018 | Bots