Facebook is looking towards the future as it makes inroads into the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The social networking company is opening an AI lab in Paris.
Facebook already has a dedicated AI team at its Silicon Valley and New York offices. The new lab in Paris is aimed at tapping the available research talent in Europe per Facebook's head of AI research Yann LeCun.
The AI research team in Paris will look to work on revolutionary future projects in tandem with the current Facebook AI Research (FAIR) teams in New York and Menlo Park. The teams will work on speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing, live translating tools, machine learning etc.
"We plan to work openly with and invest in the AI research community in France, the EU, and beyond," wrote LeCun in a blog post which announced the plans.
The AI lab in Paris will also help create more opportunities for researchers in France, as well as help build a new ecosystem surrounding Facebook, whereby start-ups too can work in the same field.
Since 1980, LeCun and a team of other researchers have been involved in the creation of computer hardware networks or "neural nets" that replicate the neuron networks in the human brain. This AI system has been embraced by several companies such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook to decode image and voice recognition to translation of language.
So what does Facebook hope to achieve in the long-term with its AI initiative?
"It's our hope that this research will ultimately help us make services like News Feed, photos and search even better and enable an entirely new set of ways to connect and share," reveals LeCun.
Thanks to AI, Facebook will be able to help in the building of better and smarter brands, as well as increase the consumer's engagement with the products that are in existence. The AI initiative will also aid the company in understanding its users better.
LeCun also revealed that natural language processing is another area being targeted by Facebook, as this will give machines the ability to understand complete sentences and paragraphs, not just stand alone words.
Currently, six people in Paris are working on FAIR. However, by year-end this number is expected to double.
