Google opens Machine Learning Research Center in Europe to further explore AI

If there was any doubt that artificial intelligence is the future of technology, look no further than Google. It's making a major commitment to Machine Learning (perhaps the only form of AI that matters), by dedicating a Zurich-based research group to it.

The company announced the new AI research push on Thursday in a blog post.

Opening as part of Google's existing Google Research center in Europe, the Machine Learning Research Group will focus on, naturally, Machine Learning, in which computers use vast amounts of data to teach themselves and build rules about the data; Natural Language Processing for speech-systems and conversational queries; and Machine Perception, which is used to understand the contents of images, sounds, music and video.

This announcement comes four years after the company began aggressively pursuing machine learning technologies, three months after Google's AI beat one of the world's best Go players and just weeks after Google codified its approach to AI during its annual Google I/O developers conference.

During I/O, Google unveiled Google Assistant, a voice-based digital assistant designed the take on Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. At the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, "Our ability to do conversational understanding is far ahead of what other assistants can do."

Now the creation of a facility dedicated to machine learning is also a signal to competitors like Facebook, which is also making a heavy investment in AI.

And why did Google choose Zurich, as opposed to its Mountain View, California, headquarters? In the blog post, the company points out that the area is home to many of the world's leading technical universities, noting: "We look forward to collaborating with all the excellent computer science research that is coming from the region."