Google agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies, a London artificial intelligence start-up founded by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg, and Mustafa Suleyman. The price was reported at around 400 million US dollars, with some reports putting it above 500 million.
What happened
- DeepMind specialised in deep learning and reinforcement learning, and had shown systems learning to play video games from raw pixels.
- Facebook had reportedly also been interested in acquiring the company.
- As part of the deal, Google was reported to have agreed to set up an ethics board to oversee the use of DeepMind’s technology.
- It was one of the largest European acquisitions of an AI company at the time.
Why it mattered
The deal marked the start of big technology companies’ race for AI talent and put London on the map as an AI hub. DeepMind went on to develop AlphaGo and AlphaFold.
Lessons for organisations
As AI capabilities grew, questions of governance and ethical oversight were raised from the outset. Organisations adopting AI today should set up clear governance, accountability, and risk assessment, for example using frameworks such as ISO/IEC 42001.
Source: TechCrunch
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