However, if you pay great attention to Google’s location in Paris, you may believe that the company established an AI research facility there in 2018. In fact, the firm informed me that it does not intend to establish a new AI team for this new center.
There is some new office space, but the 300 researchers and engineers who will work from the new hub have already worked for Google Research, DeepMind, YouTube, and Chrome.
Nonetheless, numerous high-profile government officials, including Bruno Le Maire (the minister of the economy) and Valérie Pécresse (the president of the Île-de-France region), were present to greet Sundar Pichai and congratulate Google on the news.
Given the involvement of Google’s top executive and government officials, let’s break down this communication endeavor. With this statement, Google hopes to maintain its place near the top of the list for luring AI talent.
Google could have emailed its employees to let them know when they could pick up their new workplace credentials. Instead, the firm saw it as a PR opportunity. The company must demonstrate that it values AI and considers it a top priority.
There’s a reason why Google believes it can recruit AI talent to Paris. Over the last few years, several tech titans have established AI research centers there. In addition to Google, Facebook (now Meta) established its Paris research lab in 2015, with Yann LeCun leading the AI endeavor; this research group is known as FAIR, or Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research.
Nowadays, everything is AI. Simultaneously, it demonstrates Google’s lack of confidence in artificial intelligence. Given that this building will house teams working on both AI research projects and consumer products such as YouTube and Chrome, Google might have simply referred to it as a “Google Hub.”
However, the corporation decided that this was an AI hub. They want to make it apparent that they are an artificial intelligence company. Sure, the IT behemoth recently debuted Gemini Ultra, its most powerful large language model to date. Most people, however, still associate ChatGPT with an AI assistant.
A year ago, at a press conference in Paris, Google revealed Bard, its AI chatbot helper, which is now known as Gemini. It was a hasty attempt to catch up with ChatGPT.
However, it was not just about delivering a product; it was also about demonstrating that the company is capable of producing an LLM-based chatbot and then iterating. You may view today’s new AI hub to be a continuation of the strategy of making regular AI announcements.
To be clear, Google isn’t the only tech behemoth making big announcements about AI investments. In addition to its financial commitment to ChatGPT’s parent firm OpenAI, Microsoft announced today a €3.2 billion ($3.4 billion) investment in AI infrastructure over the next two years.
Again, this investment is not solely focused on artificial intelligence. Microsoft plans to build data centers in Germany for its Azure cloud platform. Some of Azure’s offerings are AI-focused, but it is a far larger cloud service with clients outside of the AI field. So this isn’t just a Google thing.
