Today, Google announced that it’s opening a research lab dedicated to AI in Beijing. As the Chinese government and tech companies are ‘dominating’ in the concerned industry, Google would not want to skip any opportunity to go for a setup closer to the leading ‘happening hub.’
The lab will have a small team of researchers leading Google’s engineers, who are already working in the country on developments of the company’s global products. In the leadership of the lab, Google has Fei-Fei Li, Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and a Chief Scientist at Google Cloud AI; and Jia Li, Head of Research and Development at Google Cloud AI.
In Fei-fei Li’s blog, it is disclosed that Google is presently hiring for the lab along with the announcement. This was picked up by media outlets a few months back. It has been evident in observing the job-posting page of Google for Beijing that has ‘recruitment ads for technical leads and software engineers specializing in machine learning.’ According to a spokesperson of the search giant, the chief focus of the lab is on AI research instead of product development.
Li expressed in the blog that the AI field has ‘no borders’ and that they ‘want to work with the best AI talent.’ She wrote, “Whether a breakthrough (in AI industry) occurs in Silicon Valley, Beijing or anywhere else, it has the potential to make everyone’s life better for the entire world.”
To achieve the same, Google’s setup of the new lab in China is quite ideal. Ranging from globally leading brands like Alibaba and Baidu to even startups like Megvii and SenseTime have benefited recently from the Chinese talents and investments from larger companies and even the government. This further led these companies to square around the billion-dollar mark in terms of their respective valuations.
In addition to this massiveness, perhaps the latest significant mark by Beijing in the most recent days is launching a directive named “Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” in July. The simple aim of this directive is to turn the nation into a ‘primary innovation center’ for AI by 2030.
Furthermore, Sinovation Ventures AI Institute reports that over half of citations in the top 100 AI journals and conferences get settled into the ethnicity of China. This again proves the influence and expansion of the AI industry in the nation’s collective culture.
