Chinese Internet search company Baidu has snatched the head of a Google project that tried to use computers and software to mimic the human brain to head a similar effort of its own.
Andrew Ng has been chosen by Baidu, often referred to as a "Google of China," to head up a lab it set up in California to pursue "deep learning," a project to improve computer performance by mirroring how a human brain works.
Ng, a professor at Stanford University, previously helped launched Google's "deep learning" project dubbed "the Google Brain."
He will now be the chief scientist at Baidu's California lab in Sunnyvale in addition to overseeing work at the company's R&D center in Beijing.
While Baidu has not announced any intention of entering the U.S. marketplace, it is just the latest of a number of foreign high-tech firms to open research facilities in Silicon Valley and tap into the talent pool there.
Internet companies have been increasingly moving into research on artificial intelligence, with the goal of using the technology to deliver more intensely personalized online options and advertising.
The goal is to develop services that can mimic human personal assistants, with the ability to answer users' complex questions or even anticipate their interests or needs.
The best talent in the AI field has been snapped up by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM and now by Baidu with the hiring of Ng.
"Andrew is the ideal individual to lead our research efforts as we enter an era where AI plays an increasingly pronounced role," Baidu chief executive Robin Li said in a statement, calling Ng "a true visionary and key contributor to the field of artificial intelligence."
Having grown up in Singapore and Hong Kong before moving to the U.S., Ng is in a position to be of value to both the U.S. and Asian operations of Baidu.
"I'm really excited about the opportunity to build an international research organization from scratch," Ng says. "I've been super excited about AI for a long time, and this is an opportunity for me to return to that."
Ng has taken a leave from Stanford and will step down from daily responsibilities at Coursera, the online education firm he co-founded before joining Google.
