Skip to main content

DeepMind

See All Stories

Google Assistant’s new male/female voices are more realistic thanks to Alphabet’s DeepMind AI lab

Ahead of last week’s October 4th hardware event, Google rolled out male and female voice options for Assistant in English. A nice customization, the new voices also sound more realistic. This is due to work done by Alphabet’s DeepMind division and the new deep neural network being leveraged for sound synthesis.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Transfer of 1.6M patient records from UK hospitals to Google DeepMind labelled ‘inappropriate’

The legal basis for the transfer of 1.6 million patent records from the UK’s National Health Service to Google DeepMind has been described as ‘inappropriate’ by a leading data protection figure in the NHS. The data was given to Google for one of several AI projects designed to use machine learning to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of conditions.

Sky News reports that view was expressed in a letter written by Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian at the Department of Health …


Expand
Expanding
Close

DeepMind expands to US with ‘Applied’ team focusing on improving Google products

Site default logo image

Deepmind Logo

After making huge strides with AlphaGo and beginning work on replicating similar victories in StarCraft, Google DeepMind is setting up a new US division (via Bloomberg). Specifically, the first team outside of London will work on more consumer-facing products and on solving “real-world problems at Google-scale.”


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s AI can translate languages it’s never learned, lip-read better than people

Site default logo image

translate

A couple of Google announcements today highlight the astonishing progress being made in artificial intelligence. A Google Research blog post explains how the company’s switch to neural learning for Google Translate means that the machine can translate between language pairs it has never explicitly learned, while a DeepMind project showed that AI can lip-read better than people.

The company said that Google Translate no longer has individual systems for each language pair, but instead uses a single system with tokens indicating input and output languages. The AI learns from millions of examples, and it was this that made the team wonder whether it could translate between two languages without specifically being taught how to do so …


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google DeepMind sets sights on beating StarCraft II, making AI-playable version of game

google-deepmind-starcraft

After conquering the challenging game of Go earlier this year, Google’s DeepMind division is setting its sights on beating StarCraft II. DeepMind is partnering with developer Blizzard to release an open research environment that better allows AIs and machine learning systems to interact with the game.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s Deepmind division and the UK’s NHS are teaming up to fight blindness with machine learning

Deepmind LogoWe’ve seen artificial intelligence playing a growing role in tech as of late, in a wide variety of events, projects and ideas. Just in the past few months, Google‘s DeepMind division took its AI-driven computer to an historic victory against Lee Sedol, the world champion of Chinese board game of Go.

A new Guardian report shows where AI is headed next, in a joint venture between DeepMind and the British National Health Service…


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s Deepmind AI to have a Go match with world’s new number one player

alphago-lee-sedolThese days, Google — as well as many other tech giants — is all about Artificial Intelligence. We’ve seen it shown off in many different shapes at its latest I/O conference, but perhaps one of the biggest achievements in the field was a little far from the consumer-world of Allo or the new Google assistant.

After the recent victory, in fact, it will be Google’s Deepmind team to be put again to the test at Go, this time against the world’s new number one player (via Engadget)…


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google DeepMind has developed a ‘big red button’ to stop AIs from causing harm

google-deepmind

In the past year alone, Google-owned Deep Mind has made great strides in artificial intelligence. The company has long kept an eye towards safety with the establishment of an ethics board as part of the 2014 acquisition, and now a new paper (via BI) from DeepMind and the University of Oxford describes the creation of a “big red button” method that can be used to stop AI from causing harm…


Expand
Expanding
Close

AlphaGo recovers from early error to beat Sedol in fifth Go game, series ends 4-1

alphago-result

Back when I was in high school, I remember our computer studies teacher telling us that a computer only does what it’s told to do, and so mistakes are not the machine’s, but rather the user’s. With neural networks and machine learning, that is no longer true. AlphaGo, DeepMind’s specialist Go-playing machine, has proved as much. AlphaGo has been programmed to learn from its mistakes, and can err all on its own.

The AI-powered system failed to recover from an error against Lee Sedol in their fourth game, and eventually lost. In the fifth game, however, it made a mistake and was able to win the series in seemingly dramatic fashion.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Lee Sedol scores his first win against Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo [Video]

alphago-lee-sedol

Google’s AlphaGo AI may have secured the five-game match with its third win yesterday, but that doesn’t mean the competition is over. As announced today (via Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind), the second-best-in-the-world South Korean Go player Lee Sedol actually managed to score a victory against the Google AI in the fourth game…
Expand
Expanding
Close

AlphaGo’s historic third game win vs. world’s best Go player seals the match

alphago-lee-sedol

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s CEO and founder, today announced the historic news that its machine, AlphaGo, won its third game in a row versus 18-time Go world champion, Lee Sedol. With the third win under its belt, that’s the five-game match now sealed. A machine has officially beaten the world’s best player at a game which is widely considered to be very difficult to teach a machine.


Expand
Expanding
Close

World Go champion says he is “speechless” after Google’s AI beats him for the second time

alphago

Google’s AI system AlphaGo, part of its DeepMind project, has again beaten world champion Lee Sedol – and looks like it may be on track to take the title in the next game. Engadget reports Sedol saying that he was left speechless by his defeat.

“I’m quite speechless,” said Lee in the post-match conference. “It was a clear loss on my part. From the beginning there was no moment I thought I was leading.”

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tweeted that AlphaGo “played some beautiful creative moves in this game” …


Expand
Expanding
Close

AlphaGo, Google’s AI machine beats 18-time Go world champion Lee Sedol in first game

alphago-lee-sedol

As was previously announced, Google’s DeepMind project, AlphaGo took on the world’s best Go player, Lee Sedol in the first of five matches yesterday. And it won. While its first victory against a different player was important, beating the 18-time world champion is another matter entirely. This is a momentous victory for AlphaGo, and for the machine learning industry as a whole.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s AI-created artworks sold at San Francisco auction for as much as $8000

google-deepmind-art

We’ve read a lot about Google’s machine-learning projects over the past 12 months. Perhaps most intriguing was the Deepmind project which created works of art using neural networks. Or, perhaps a more accurate description is, that the DeepDream algorithm would turn existing pictures in to the stuff of nightmares. By distorting shapes in to animal heads and psychedelic patterns and colors, the finished product was almost terrifying.

As it turns out, Google put on an auction at a trendy San Francisco venue and sold some of its larger pieces for as much as $8,000.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s Go champion-beating AI machine will have its next match livestreamed on YouTube

Go

Towards the backend of last month, it was revealed that Google had developed an AI machine so advanced, it could beat a French Go champion at one of the most challenging games to teach a machine. DeepMind’s AlphaGo machine beat European champion Fan Hui 5-0 at Go, a game which — although simple to learn — features millions of combinations. Because of this complexity, teaching a machine to play beyond an amateur level has been challenging.


Expand
Expanding
Close

AlphaGo AI from Google’s DeepMind lab can now beat a human at Go

Go

In 2014, Google bought UK startup DeepMind, considered to be the premier lab working on artificial intelligence. Today, head Demis Hassabis announced that they built an AI that can beat a human being at the ancient Chinese game of Go. The game is widely considered to be a benchmark for an AI’s ability to think.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google confirms plans to acquire artificial intelligence firm DeepMind, reports indicate $400m or $500m price

Site default logo image

terminator

First they created self-driving (and maybe flying) cars. Then they created a new robotics division and put Android’s Andy Rubin in charge. And who could forget that they recently bought Boston Dynamics, the firm responsible for several DARPA-funded robotics projects?

Now, Re/code reports that Google is planning to purchase DeepMind, a London-based AI company that specializes in games and e-commerce algorithms. While Google could possibly put the company’s work on e-commerce to good use, Re/code indicates that Google is likely acquiring the firm for its talent, not so much for its technology. The site pegs the purchase price at round $400 million, but The Information says the number is actually closer to $500 million.

Just what does Google plan to do with all of these purchases? Some have previously speculated that the company is working on an intelligent delivery system to rival Amazon’s futuristic delivery drones. Andy Rubin has said that he has an interest in revolutionizing industries that have not yet been impacted by the precision of robotics technology, such as the assembly of electronics.

Or maybe they just want an army of terminators. But hey, who wouldn’t?