Google Seeks Path Back to China With AI Lab

"We need to recognize the opportunity and leadership that China has already displayed in the area of technology and AI," said Google Cloud executive and co-head of the new lab Fei-Fei Li. "By opening a lab here, we come here to extend our hand out, and show this part of the world we would like to listen to them, work with them." Google has already hired "a handful" of top researchers in deep learning and natural-language processing, and plans to hire others focusing on computer vision, said Ms. Li, who is also director of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab. Google declined to comment on how big the Center would be in future. It is the latest in a series of moves by Google that some see as a sign the company is pushing its case to re-enter China's massive, yet elusive, consumer market. Google's search engine has been blocked in China since 2010, when it refused to submit to government censorship.