Google stakes claim in AI as Facebook, Amazon rivalry heats up

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during Google I/O 2016 at Shoreline Amphitheatre on May 19, 2016 in Mountain View, California. "We're at a seminal moment for AI," Google CEO Sundar Pichai told 7,000 people attending I/O, the tech giant's annual developers conference at a sun-splashed Shoreline Amphitheater, an outdoor concert venue near Google's worldwide headquarters here. Pichai, who has repeatedly stressed the importance of AI and machine learning, anticipates a momentous shift in computing: super-smart machines on every device we use guiding every moment of our days. "We're entering a golden age of machine learning and artificial intelligence," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a public conversation Wednesday at the Washington Post's Transformers Conference in Washington D.C. Google was an early pioneer in artificial intelligence, which drew on its massive data files derived from consumer searches on Google.com. But it's seen its mantle slip after breakthroughs by its rivals, such as Amazon's Echo and Facebook's bot platform.