Google DeepMind Adds Oxford University Experts To Bolster AI Research

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
As part of an ongoing effort to bolster its London-based artificial intelligence research center, Google has announced a new partnership with Oxford University and the acquisition of two of the institution’s spin-off companies.
According to Samuel Gibbs of The Guardian, the seven Oxford engineers and computer science experts behind Dark Blue Labs (Dr. Edward Grefenstette, Dr. Karl Moritz Hermann, Prof. Phil Blunsom and Prof. Nando de Freitas) and Vision Factory (Dr. Karen Simonyan, Max Jaderberg and Prof. Andrew Zisserman) will be joining Google DeepMind in various capacities.
“Dark Blue Labs specialized in deep learning for understanding natural language, something Google’s search products have been pioneering on a large scale with both typed and spoken natural language queries,” Gibbs said. “Vision Factory specialized in visual recognition systems and deep learning, applying artificial intelligence techniques to enhance the accuracy and speed of object recognition and other vision-based computer systems.”
Prof. de Freitas, Prof. Blunsom, Dr. Grefenstette and Dr. Hermann will be reassigned to focus on research to enable computers, robots or other types of machines to better understand what users are saying and asking them to do. Dr. Simonyan, Prof. Zisserman and Jaderberg will assist Google in improving vision systems, such as object recognition in search and camera-based search apps and likely the data-processing system required by self-driving cars.
“We are thrilled to welcome these extremely talented machine learning researchers to the Google DeepMind team and are excited about the potential impact of the advances their research will bring,” Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind and Vice President of Engineering at Google, wrote Thursday in a blog post.
In a statement, Oxford officials noted that, as part of the collaboration with DeepMind, the university would be receiving “a significant seven-figure contribution” to be split between the computer science and engineering departments. The financial contribution will be used to establish student internship programs, workshops and a joint lecture series, Hassabis added.
“Machine Learning is a technology whose time has come. We have invested heavily in this area and we are truly excited at the prospect of what we can achieve together with Google,” said Professor Mike Wooldridge, Head of the Department of Computer Science. “We are extremely proud of Phil, Nando, Ed, and Karl, and truly grateful for their efforts in securing such a fantastic donation to the department, and for paving the way for future collaboration with one of the world’s leading computing companies.”
Google did not reveal financial details about the partnership, said Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant, which acquired DeepMind for a reported $400 million back in January, is turning to AI to develop new products and maintain its dominance in the online search market, he added.
DeepMind, which specializes in machine learning, advanced algorithms and systems neuroscience, was founded by Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman in 2011, redOrbit.com’s own Enid Burns reported in January. Prior to its acquisition by Google, there had been reports that Facebook was interested in purchasing the London startup.
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