Google’s DeepMind heads to Canada for its first international AI lab

Google's artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary DeepMind has opened its first international research lab in Edmonton, Canada. The research lab is being set up in close partnership with the University of Alberta, and will be led by UAlberta academics Rich Sutton, Michael Bowling and Patrick Pilarski.

“It was a big decision for us to open our first non-UK research lab, and the fact we’re doing so in Edmonton is a sign of the deep admiration and respect we have for the Canadian research community,” says DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis Hassabis. “In fact, we’ve had particularly strong links with the UAlberta for many years: nearly a dozen of its outstanding graduates have joined us at DeepMind, and we’ve sponsored the machine learning lab to provide additional funding for PhDs over the past few years.”

Professor Sutton is a renowned name in reinforcement learning and was the first-ever advisor to DeepMind in 2010. Reinforcement learning is a technique that allows computer agents to teach themselves through trial-and-error, with researchers programming virtual rewards when they do the right thing. Sutton says that the new lab will “turbo-charge the research ecosystem” and “drive a whole host of new scientific breakthroughs right here in Canada, propelling the field of AI forwards into exciting new territory.”

Alongside Sutton, Bowling and Pilarski will be Adam White, returning to Alberta as an adjunct professor, as well as six other researchers who co-authored a recent scientific paper about “DeepStack,” an AI system that made headlines by beating human pro poker players at no-limit Texas hold’em.

DeepMind has been in news in recent years for a number of reasons — perhaps most notably for its ability to defeat the world’s top Go players using an AI-powered program called AlphaGo. More recently, DeepMind has found itself in hot water for an ongoing data-sharing deal with the UK’s public health service, the NHS, a partnership that was deemed to be illegal.