Facebook’s Rob Fergus in ‘huge battles’ with Google for AI talent

Google DeepMind CEO Demis
Hassabis.
Google
DeepMind

• A Facebook AI chief told Wired that he has “huge
  battles” with Google-owned DeepMind for talent.
• Both Facebook and Google tried to but Deepmind. Google
  won.
• Elon Musk has previously voiced concern about Facebook
  and Deepmind monopolising AI.

Facebook and Google are slugging it out for artificial
intelligence talent.

That’s according to Rob Fergus, who heads up Facebook’s AI
division in New York. He
told Wired that the company engages in “huge battles” with
Google’s London-based AI company DeepMind.

Google
acquired DeepMind in 2014 for about £400 million ($600
million at the time), after originally being courted by Facebook
as well.

Facebook now has its own AI division, called the Facebook
Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) group. FAIR is spread
across multiple US cities, as well as France and Canada.

Wired described Deepmind as FAIR’s biggest rival, and FAIR’s New
York chief Rob Fergus said the two companies lock horns for the
brightest minds.

“Of course we do fight a lot. We have huge battles with [Google] for the best talent… Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.” he
told Wired.

Read more:

Google’s cutting-edge artificial-intelligence unit is costing
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While Facebook and Google may be racing to the top spot, some
industry leaders have warned against any one company holding a
monopoly on AI. Elon Musk
told Recode’s Kara Swisher that he’s in favour of creating an
independent body to introduce some oversight.

He also said that he founded his own company OpenAI — which has
trained neural networks to
beat human players at the video game Dota 2 — to counter the
possibility of AI power being monopolised, and mentioned DeepMind
specifically.

“There is a very strong concentration of AI power, and especially
at Google/DeepMind. And I have very high regard for Larry Page
and Demis Hassabis, but I do think that there’s value to some
independent oversight,” he said.

Although undoubtedly major players, Facebook and Google are not
the only game in town. Amazon, Uber, Apple, and IBM all have
their own dedicated AI divisions.

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