This morning, Google CEO Sundar Pichai opened a new center in Paris dedicated to artificial intelligence. The hub is located in a newly renovated building near his Google headquarters in Paris. It is scheduled to host approximately 300 researchers and engineers.
But if you pay close attention to Google's Paris location, you might think that Google had already launched an AI research center in Paris in 2018. In fact, the company told me it has no plans to create a new AI team for this purpose. new hub. There will be some new office space, but the team of 300 researchers and engineers who will be working at the new hub have already worked at Google Research and DeepMind, as well as YouTube and Chrome.
Still, several government officials were in attendance, including Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire and Regional President of France Valérie Pécrès-Ile de France, to welcome Sundar Pichai and congratulate Google on the announcement.
Image credits: Google
Let's take a closer look at this communications effort, including the involvement of Google's top leaders and government officials. With the positioning of this announcement, Google wants to stay near the top of the list when it comes to acquiring his AI talent.
Google could have sent an email to employees letting them know when they could pick up their badges to their new offices. Instead, the company decided this was his PR opportunity. Companies need to focus on AI and demonstrate that it is a priority.
And there's a reason Google thinks it can attract AI talent in Paris. In recent years, several big tech companies have established AI laboratories in Paris. In addition to Google, he also founded Facebook (now Meta), a research institute in Paris in 2015 where Yanlequin took the helm of his AI initiatives. This research group is called FAIR, which stands for Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research.
Since then, many researchers and engineers have left big technology companies to launch startups. Mistral AI is perhaps the most iconic example, as the young startup has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars to develop new underlying models.
However, Paris has a thriving ecosystem of AI startups. Examples include Nabla, Dust, Gladia, and Giscardo. In just a few years, some of the people working at these startups may choose to work at Google if they're looking for something a little different.
Everything is AI now
At the same time, it once again showed that Google has concerns about artificial intelligence. Google could have simply called it the “Google Hub,” given that this building will house a team that works not only on his AI research projects, but also on consumer products such as YouTube and Chrome. .
But the company decided it was an AI hub. They want to say loud and clear that they are an AI company. Indeed, the tech giant just launched Gemini Ultra, its most powerful large-scale language model to date. But when most people think of AI assistants, they still think of ChatGPT.
A year ago, Google announced Bard, an AI chatbot assistant now called Gemini, at a press conference in Paris. We scrambled to catch up with ChatGPT.
But as much as it was a product launch, it was also about planting a flag that the company could release an LLM-based chatbot, and iterated on that. Today's new AI hub can be considered a continuation of our strategy of regular AI announcements.
Image credits: Eric Laignel / Google Studio Architecture
To be fair, Google isn't the only tech giant making big statements about AI investments. In addition to his financial commitment to OpenAI, ChatGPT's parent company, Microsoft also announced today that it will make his €3.2 billion ($3.4 billion) investment in Germany's AI infrastructure over the next two years. .
Again, this investment is not just focused on artificial intelligence. Microsoft plans to build a data center in Germany for its Azure cloud platform. Although some of Azure's products are focused on AI, Azure is a much larger cloud provider with customers that have nothing to do with the AI industry. So this isn't just a Google issue.