Source: livemint.com
Google on Thursday announced Google Research India, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based research lab out of Bengaluru. “We look forward to engaging with everything from academic institutions, to government to the industry and startup ecosystem in the country in the field of AI,” said Jay Yagnik, vice president and engineering fellow.
The Indian AI lab will be led by Dr. Manish Gupta, a renowned computer scientist in the country and an ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) fellow. “We are making a long term commitment and this will be one of our large investments,” Yagnik said, though he didn’t confirm how many people will be employed at the AI research lab in India.
Yagnik also said the company hopes to go deeper in its interactions with academics and students in the country in the AI space through this initiative. “We already give out phd fellowships to students in the country, we also fund top academics through various programmes. We are hoping to go much deeper in those relationships,” he said.
“The ecosystem here is ripe for fostering and taking to the next level and we would love to play a key role in that,” he added. Yagnik says what form the AI community in the country takes will depend on Google’s interactions with various stakeholders, like IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and more.
Google already has various AI research labs across the world, under its Google AI arm. The Bengaluru lab will be the first in India and the company doesn’t foresee the need to have another one, though Yagnik said it will revaluate this once the lab reaches a certain size.
