Artificial Intelligence is a growing field and one that is expected to become incredibly useful and interesting in the coming decades. Many of the companies that are entering the market right now are still just “start-ups” but now that a Google acquisition of DeepMind has been confirmed, advances in artificial intelligence may be coming even faster than before.
One early report of the acquisition has suggested that Google paid $400 million for DeepMind, but the company itself has only confirmed that a deal was made.
DeepMind worked in the fields of simulations, ecommerce, and games, but the vast majority of its work has been in the realm of artificial intelligence. A large portion of its advancements were centered around language and figuring out ways to enhance the learning capabilities of a robot.
Although slightly different than artificial intelligence, Google has been making numerous acquisitions and moves into the field of automation. Whether it is with self-driving cars or the $3.2 acquisition of Nest, Google is looking to come out with products that remove human involvement from as many scenarios as possible.
Last year, Google pumped money into its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab which is partnered with NASA and various universities. The research that is taking place at the Quantum Lab involves figuring out how quantum computing can lead to machine learning.
we gather large volumes of direct or indirect evidence of relationships of interest, and we apply learning algorithms to generalize from that evidence to new cases of interest, – DeepMind
Neither company has released details regarding the deal or what is expected to come out of it, but the acquisition of DeepMind simply appears to be another strategic move by Google to set itself up as a market leader in the automation and artificial intelligence industries.
According to Re/code, which first came out with a report on the acquisition, sources in the artificial intelligence fields have claimed that DeepMind was a major player in the AI sector. If those sources are correct, DeepMind competed against Google with at least 50 employees and $50 million in funding.
Summary: Google has acquired DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company, for a still confidential amount of money. This acquisition comes after numerous advances by Google in the automation and artificial intelligence fields during 2012 and 2013.
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