Google can't miss out on China's AI boom--so it's opening a research lab there

Google announced today it will open a lab in Beijing dedicated to researching artificial intelligence (AI). The news comes as China's government and tech companies race ahead to dominate the field, putting Google in a position where it has no choice but to set up locally in order to remain at the cutting edge. According to the search giant, the lab will be led by a small team of researchers and supported by Google engineers already working in China on developing the company's global-facing products. It will be helmed by Jia Li, head of research and development at Google Cloud AI, and Fei-fei Li, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and a chief scientist at Google Cloud AI. In a blog post announcing the move, Li notes that the company is currently hiring for positions at the lab--something media outlets picked up on a few months ago. Searching through Google's job-posting page for Beijing yields recruitment ads for technical leads and software engineers specializing in machine learning.