DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence (AI) lab, which was acquired by Google, is putting together an AI team in New York. It has already formed a core group for which it has hired about 10 to 15 people ever since Rob Fergus, who co-founded Facebook AI Research (FAIR) joined DeepMind in June 2020.
The Company is now expanding this team in New York. Presently working remotely, this team will soon begin to work out of a Google office once the pandemic-related restrictions are relaxed. Currently, the Company has a 1,000-strong workforce globally, with most of the employees based out of London, where its headquarters are located.
The team already has Christine Kaeser-Chen, former Google employee, as a staff research engineer and Ishita Dasgupta from Harvard, who joined in December 2020.
DeepMind’s AI tech is being successfully used in diabetic retinopathy or age-related macular degeneration, voice synthesis, and wind power prediction among other things. Its expertise in reinforcement learning has been effectively used in games, such as StarCraft II.
The Company is now clearly trying to focus more on healthcare, physics and medicine. It is working on creating general artificial intelligence (AGI)
New York is the right place for DeepMind to expand, given the number of AI labs located at the universities there, including New York University, where Fergus himself teaches.
While DeepMind is said to be a very prominent global AI company, it is reported that Humayun Sheikh, who had significantly contributed to DeepMind commercialising its AI tech, is now setting up its rival in Cambridge, called Fetch.ai.
This machine learning platform has recently received a funding of $5 million from Canadian digital asset company, GDA Group.
