Google鈥檚 shopping spree is far from over. Today the firm confirmed it has purchased Technologies, a machine-learning company based in London, for $400 million.
The acquisition of the AI firm follows Google鈥檚 purchase of eight advanced robotics companies in December and the smart thermostat maker Nest Labs earlier this month.
It is not hard to see why Google might be interested. DeepMind Technologies employs machine-learning engineers led by Demis Hassabis, a former commercial video-game coder turned artificial-intelligence expert and neuroscientist. The firm is aiming to build general purpose artificial-intelligence systems. In particular, it appears to be developing computers that can learn by observation.
Advertisement
Last month, DeepMind revealed that it had developed an AI algorithm that was able to learn how to play iconic early video games like Breakout and Pong. It did this simply by watching them being played on a vintage 1977 Atari 2600 games console. Having surmised the rules and rewards from the way the pixels were batted about the screen, the at playing the games.
Although Google has not elaborated on why it has bought the firm 鈥� and on past form it probably won鈥檛 鈥� two US patents filed by DeepMind Technologies on 16 January offer some clues.
Both patents cover intelligent ways to improve the process of 鈥渞everse image search鈥�, the notion of uploading a picture to a search engine so that it can find similar ones. This is already possible on Google鈥檚 image search page but it often retrieves amusingly irrelevant images. To improve this, in US patent filing , DeepMind engineers Benjamin Coppin and Mustafa Suleyman reveal a different trick: allow the user to input two images, let the algorithm find similarities between them, and then search for those instead.
A second filed by the same pair enables the user to home in on a small area of two pictures to improve image search still further.
However, the way acquisitions disappear into the sprawling Google organisation means we may never know the specific ways in which DeepMind鈥檚 tech will be used.
Mike Cook, an engineer specialising in AI鈥檚 role in video-game design at Goldsmiths, University of London, says Google now has a formidable array of AI experts at its disposal. 鈥淕oogle just purchased a bulk-buy order of talent, and that alone makes the acquisition worthwhile. I鈥檝e seen many academics leave their universities for DeepMind recently, and this makes the acquisition a hugely valuable one for Google.鈥�
Unfortunately, being subsumed into Google means we may lose touch with progress on Hassabis鈥檚 ambitious attempts to create a general, rather than specialised, artificial intelligence.
鈥淭he real issue is that this takeover means we are even less likely to know if DeepMind is getting somewhere with that,鈥� Cook says.
