DeepMind – the UK-based artificial intelligence (AI) division of Google – has announced it will be joining forces with the University of Alberta to create its first international research lab. The new lab will tap into the talent of leading academics in the field of AI, and will be led jointly by Rich Sutton, Michael Bowling and Patrick Pilarski. DeepMind describes itself as a "hybrid of start-up culture and academia", a model that will be pushed forward by its newly announced partnership. The company will provide funding and support to AI programmes at the University of Alberta, while also benefitting from the expertise of its academics. The company has already flourished in the UK by forging partnerships with top academic institutions, including University College London and Oxford University.

There's nothing new about worrying that superintelligent machines may endanger humanity, but the idea has lately become hard to avoid. A spurt of progress in artificial intelligence as well as comments by figures such as Bill Gates--who declared himself "in the camp that is concerned about superintelligence"--have given new traction to nightmare scenarios featuring supersmart software. Now two leading centers in the current AI boom are trying to bring discussion about the dangers of smart machines down to Earth. Google's DeepMind, the unit behind the company's artificial Go champion, and OpenAI, the nonprofit lab funded in part by Tesla's Elon Musk, have teamed up to make practical progress on a problem they argue has attracted too many headlines and too few practical ideas: How do you make smart software that doesn't go rogue? "If you're worried about bad things happening, the best thing we can do is study the relatively mundane things that go wrong in AI systems today," says Dario Amodei, a curly-haired researcher on OpenAI's small team working on AI safety.

There's nothing new about worrying that superintelligent machines may endanger humanity, but the idea has lately become hard to avoid. A spurt of progress in artificial intelligence as well as comments by figures such as Bill Gates--who declared himself "in the camp that is concerned about superintelligence"--have given new traction to nightmare scenarios featuring supersmart software. Now two leading centers in the current AI boom are trying to bring discussion about the dangers of smart machines down to Earth. Google DeepMind, the unit behind the company's artificial Go champion, and OpenAI, the nonprofit lab funded in part by Tesla's Elon Musk, have teamed up to make practical progress on a problem they argue has attracted too many headlines and too few practical ideas: How do you make smart software that doesn't go rogue? "If you're worried about bad things happening, the best thing we can do is study the relatively mundane things that go wrong in AI systems today," says Dario Amodei, a curly-haired researcher on OpenAI's small team working on AI safety.

Google is betting big on artificial intelligence. Its DeepMind subsidiary has announced plans to expand its operations to Canada in order to accommodate the company's ever-growing research initiatives. In a blog post yesterday, CEO Demis Hassabis revealed DeepMind will be opening its first ever international research space in Edmonton. The undertaking will unfold in a close collaboration with the University of Alberta (UAlberta). "It was a big decision for us to open our first non-UK research lab," Hassabis said.

DeepMind, Google's London-based artificial intelligence research branch, is launching a team at the University of Alberta in Canada. DeepMind is launching a team at the university partly for proximity to the broader AI research community in Canada. A number of leading AI researchers in Silicon Valley hail from Canada, where they plugged away at deep learning, a complex automated process of data analysis, during a period when that technology -- now popular at major tech companies -- was considered by the larger computer science community to be a dead end. Plus, almost a dozen DeepMind staff came from the university, according to a blog post by DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis announcing the new lab. An Alberta PhD and a former post doc from the school played key roles in one of DeepMind's hallmark accomplishments, getting its AlphaGo software to beat the human world champion at Chinese strategy game Go. "Our hope is that this collaboration will help turbocharge Edmonton's growth as a technology and research hub," wrote Hassabis, "attracting even more world-class AI researchers to the region and helping to keep them there too."

Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google's artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepMind speaks during the AI forum of the Future of Go summit at Wuzhen internet international conference and exhibition center in Wuzhen, China's Zhejiang province, 24 May 2017. The summit is held from 23 to 27 May in Wuzhen.

Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence team has been based in the UK ever since it was acquired in 2014. However, it's finally ready to branch out -- just not to the US. DeepMind has announced that its first international research lab is coming to the Canadian prairie city of Edmonton, Alberta later in July. A trio of University of Alberta computer science professors (Richard Sutton, Michael Bowling and Patrick Pilarski) will lead the group, which includes seven more AI veterans. As Recode observes, you can chalk it up to a combination of familiarity and political considerations.

Google's high-profile artificial intelligence unit has a new Canadian outpost. DeepMind, which Google bought in 2014 for roughly $650 million, said Wednesday that it would open a research center in Edmonton, Canada. The new research center, which will work closely with the University of Alberta, is the United Kingdom-based DeepMind's first international AI research lab. DeepMind, now a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet (goog), recruited three University of Alberta professors from to lead the new research lab. The professors--Rich Sutton, Michael Bowling, and Patrick Pilarski--will maintain their positions at the university while working at the new research office.

The logic around artificial intelligence is fuzzy. Some people might argue that the heuristic algorithms used in antivirus to recognize potential threats are artificial intelligence. Others got a glimmer of hope -- outside of the security field -- with the landmark success of AlphaGo. In 2016, the DeepMind software won four out of five matches of the complex Chinese Go board game when it out-strategized top professional player Lee Sedol. The win astounded viewers and saved Alphabet Group, which acquired the London-based DeepMind in 2014, a million dollars of prize money.

Artificial intelligence is already being put to use in the NHS, with Google's AI firm DeepMind providing technology to help monitor patients. And a new study suggests that Google could soon be meeting with Genomic England - a company set up by the Department of Health to sequence 100,000 genomes – to discuss whether DeepMind could get involved. In an article for The Conversation, Edward Hockings a researcher at the University of the West of Scotland, explains the risks of letting a private company gain access to sensitive genetic data. In Google's case, he says, it could allow them to target users with personalised advertising based on their preferences and health risks. It could also create profiles of people based on their DNA data, which may provide details such as their risk of becoming a criminal.