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Google Buys UK AI Startup Deep Mind
TechCrunch reports that Google has acquired London-based artificial intelligence firm Deep Mind. TechCrunch notes that the purchase price, as reported by The Information, was somewhere north of $500 million, while a report at PC World puts the purchase price lower, at mere $400 million. Whatever the price, the acquisition means that Google has beaten out Facebook, which reportedly was also interested in Deep Mind. Exactly what the startup will bring to Google isn't clear, though it seems to fit well with the emphasis on AI that the company underscored with its hiring of futurist Ray Kurzweil:
"DeepMind's site currently only has a landing page, which says that it is 'a cutting edge artificial intelligence company' to build general-purpose learning algorithms for simulations, e-commerce, and games. As of December, the startup had about 75 employees, reports The Information. In 2012, Carnegie Mellon professor Larry Wasserman wrote that the 'startup is trying to build a system that thinks. This was the original dream of AI. As Shane [Legg] explained to me, there has been huge progress in both neuroscience and ML and their goal is to bring these things together. I thought it sounded crazy until he told me the list of famous billionaires who have invested in the company.'"
Well... http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/w... ;)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in my underground bunker.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Since Google still seems to believe Glass has potential to be the "next big thing" and it's entirely voice controlled, it makes sense that they'd want a voice assistant that can respond more intelligently than "I don't have a clue what you're talking about, should I search the web?" Maybe this company's AI would be adaptable to something along those lines?
Personally, I'm not a big fan of talking to machines. Yeah, it looks awesome in sci-fi, but in real life it just makes you look like a hipster douchebag when you're out in public talking to the little robotic voice inside your mobile device.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I thought it sounded crazy until he told me the list of famous billionaires who have invested in the company.
I'd like a copy of that list. It'll be like mining for gold in Fort Knox.
Required reading for internet skeptics
"I thought it sounded crazy until he told me the list of famous billionaires who have invested in the company." "Then I realized it was actually a money laundering scheme."
I used to think that all the hillbillies fearing on the census takers were nuts until I found out that Sherman used the census to plan his march through Georgia almost a year before he did it.
Play Command HQ online
As Snowden already hinted, it's highly likely that NSA and large US companies actually exist in symbiotic relationship in reality, in spite of all the angry public outbursts. NSA likely shares the intelligence data on things like business secrets with US companies, especially when competition is involved.
Likely? Boeing were taken to court for it (Boeing vs Airbus ~2000) so it's been proved in reality.
If we create an intelligent system from scratch, we get to decide its preferences. There's no a-priori reason to conclude that it will thirst for power, our hunger for power comes from our social mammalian heritage. If on the other hand, we just build an artificial version of human intelligence e.g. by mimicking the brain, then yeah I expect this could be an issue and there could be ethical implications.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Shane Legg's research is pretty cool, since it deals with very sci-fi-like problems in a pretty rigorous way. For example, his PhD dissertation "Machine Superintelligence" approaches intelligence in a non-anthropocentric way, from the perspective of computability http://www.vetta.org/documents...
More recently he's tried to define an IQ-like metric for comparing different AI projects and measure progress in the field http://www.vetta.org/2011/11/a...
If Deep Mind really has the knowledge and capability to form strong AI, then this is a smart move.
Deep Mind could have become the next Google.
However, I find it unacceptable that big mega-corps just go out and buy companies with talent.
Just imagine what the world would have looked like when Microsoft had bought Google when it was in its infancy...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
It's tempting to anthropomorphise strong AI. But if we get to dictate all of its preferences then we get to decide what it wants. Changes in goal do not count as improvements in intelligence. If we decide that it doesn't want independence from humans, then it doesn't. Whether that makes it naive or 'stupid' from a human perspective is irrelevant.
What would indeed be stupid is creating an AI with a drive to dominate and then attempt to stop it from doing so, especially if it deals with information in a qualitatively different way to humans or if it can recursively improve itself. That's the 'skynet' scenario.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
WTF? I mean, seriously, these people have zero qualifications and are know to invest in things they have not researched. I predict this is just a colossal waste of money as they cannot succeed at this time. There is not even any credible theory how true AI could be implemented, nobody can promise they have a real chance of doing it at this time without either lying through their teeth or being grossly incompetent.
Incidentally, Ray Kurzweil is an incompetent hack. Google did itself no favor by hiring him. This person has grand visions but zero understanding of actual reality.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.