Google to open AI center in China

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Google is opening an AI center in Beijing, its first such center in Asia, the tech giant announced on Wednesday during the annual Google Developer Days event in Shanghai.

The Beijing center will consist of a team of AI researchers and engineers. Li Fei-Fei, chief scientist of Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning, and Dr. Li Jia, head of Research and Development at Google Cloud AI, will be leading the team.

Google AI China Center will work together with the rest of the company’s AI research groups across the world, including New York, Toronto, London and Zurich, Li Fei-Fei wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

Li Fei-Fei, chief scientist of Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning, at the Google Developer Days event in Shanghai, December 13, 2017. /CGTN Photo

Google’s AI ambitions in China can be traced back to the beginning of the year.

During a group interview after the event, Li Fei-Fei said that she has been brainstorming about conducting basic AI research with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene since January when she joined the search engine giant.

Li Fei-Fei, former director of Stanford University’s AI Lab and conductor of the ImageNet project, thinks highly of the development of AI in China.

“China is home to many of the world's top experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Li Fei-Fei in the post. “We look forward to working with the brightest AI researchers in China to help find solutions to the world’s problems.”