The Google AI China Center will have a small group of researchers supported by several hundred China-based engineers. “It will be a small team focused on advancing basic AI research in publications, academic conferences and knowledge exchange,” said Fei-Fei Li, the chief scientist at Google’s cloud unit who will lead the Beijing research center. Artificial intelligence applications like image recognition only become accurate and useful once they are fed with huge reams of detailed user data. Without a strong Chinese user base, Google doesn’t have data that goes that deep on people in the country. But the company says the AI center is more focused on attracting top-notch researchers coming out of China, rather than data.
