Losses at DeepMind, the artificial intelligence firm owned by Google parent Alphabet, grew by 1.5 percent last year, according to its latest annual report, CNBC reports. The London-headquartered AI lab — founded in 2010 by Demis Hassabis, Mustafa Suleyman and Shane Legg — had a loss of £477 million (US$649 million) in 2019, worse than the £470 million loss in 2018, according to documents filed Thursday with the U.K.’s Companies House registry. The vast majority of DeepMind’s spending in 2019 went on “staff and other related costs,” with the annual report showing that some £468 million went toward this, up from £398 million in 2018. DeepMind now employs around 1,000 people worldwide including some of the world’s leading AI research scientists, who can command annual salaries of more than $1 million. We’re excited to build on this unprecedented progress as we head into next year,” they added.

Source: The Standard December 17, 2020 14:26 UTC