Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

recode.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 209 posts

Re: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

#2

Post by Oculus »

$400M for a company I've never heard before is quite surprising. Could someone who participates in the machine learning community share any insights or facts they have on the company? Other than the founders' histories, the article doesn't do much justice to the pricetag.

Re: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

#6

Post by mjn »

Oculus wrote: post #2

$400M for a company I've never heard before is quite surprising. Could someone who participates in the machine learning community share any insights or facts they have on the company? Other than the founders' histories, the article doesn't do much justice to the pricetag.

As far as I can tell, quite a few ML people can vouch for someone at the company (I know someone there second-hand myself), but the details of what precisely they're doing have been kept fairly well under wraps. The broad parameters are "something to do with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)", which is a field that tries to straddle the fine line between contemporary AI and sci-fi AI, without erring too far in the direction of either too incrementalist to too pie-in-the-sky. More specifically on the "methods" side, they have people who are known in both statistical ML, and in the recent resurgence of neural-networks known as "deep learning".

You can discern some more about their general direction by looking at courses they've been involved with, talks they've given or sponsored, etc., but as far as I know (and I tried to probe a few months ago through a friend who knew someone there) their actual product / business / etc. hasn't really been leaked, or at least not leaked widely enough that I could find out about it.

Re: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

#7

Post by midas007 »

theboss wrote: post #3

Dang. $400million sounds like a lot for landing page. Only kidding. Best of luck to those guys. They sound very talented.

Extracting millions out of acquirees should be done with the least possible investment. Seriously, if you can rook 'em in some way that can't blow back, go for it.

Re: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

#8

Post by Oculus »

mjn wrote: post #6
Oculus wrote: post #2

$400M for a company I've never heard before is quite surprising. Could someone who participates in the machine learning community share any insights or facts they have on the company? Other than the founders' histories, the article doesn't do much justice to the pricetag.

As far as I can tell, quite a few ML people can vouch for someone at the company (I know someone there second-hand myself), but the details of what precisely they're doing have been kept fairly well under wraps. The broad parameters are "something to do with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)", which is a field that tries to straddle the fine line between contemporary AI and sci-fi AI, without erring too far in th…

This has seriously piqued my curiosity. Do you think Google bought the product or the team? $400M is a big chunk of change for ~3 people.

Edit: peaked --> piqued, thanks to spiderPig!

Re: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

#10

Post by [deleted] »

Oculus wrote: post #8
mjn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, quite a few ML people can vouch for someone at the company (I know someone there second-hand myself), but the details of what precisely they're doing have been kept fairly well under wraps. The broad parameters are "something to do with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)", which is a field that tries to straddle the fine line between contemporary AI and sci-fi AI, without erring too far in th…

This has seriously piqued my curiosity. Do you think Google bought the product or the team? $400M is a big chunk of change for ~3 people. Edit: peaked --> piqued, thanks to spiderPig!

[deleted]
Post reply on HN