Google\u2019s DeepMind team, founded in 2011 and acquired by Google earlier this year, recently hired members of two artificial intelligence companies that were birthed by Oxford University. The two companies are named Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory. According to the Dark Blue Labs website, the company focuses on \u201clearning deep structured and unstructured representations of data to make intelligent products, including natural language understanding, a reality,\u201d while Vision Factory builds object and text recognition technology.<\/p>\n
The Guardian<\/em> said that some members of the teams will remain at Oxford University as \u201cguest lecturers,\u201d and that part of the deal involved a sizeable donation on Google\u2019s behalf to Oxford\u2019s engineering and comp-sci programs to provide new lectures, workshops and internship programs.<\/p>\n \u201cGoogle DeepMind has hired all seven founders of these startups with the three professors holding joint appointments at Oxford University where they will continue to spend part of their time,\u201d Google DeepMind\u00a0co-founder and Vice President of Engineering said. \u201cThese exciting partnerships underline how committed Google DeepMind is to supporting the development of UK academia and the growth of strong scientific research labs.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that the natural language technology researched by Dark Blue Labs will make its way into existing Google products, like Google Search, which are already capable of understanding voice commands. Meanwhile,\u00a0The Guardian<\/em> said the Vision Factory team will \u201chelp Google improve its vision systems.\u201d Google Goggles, a free app, already allows users to identify objects using the camera on a smartphone, but the team\u2019s expertise could also be applied to Google Glass and, as\u00a0The Guardian<\/em> notes, to Google\u2019s self-driving cars.<\/p>\n