User:Megab/DeepMindWIP

DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence (AI) company. It was acquired by Google in 2014.

The company's latest achievement is the creation of a neural network that learns how to play some video games in a similar way as humans.

2011 to 2014
In 2011 the start-up was founded by UCL Alumni Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg, who met at UCL's Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit. they were then joined by Mustafa Suleyman.

Since then major venture capitalist firms Horizons Ventures and Founders Fund have invested in the company, as well as entrepreneur Scott Banister. Jaan Tallinn was an early investor and an advisor to the company.

In 2014, DeepMind received the "Company of the Year" award by Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Acquisition by Google
On 26 January 2014, Google announced that it had agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies; analysts later announced that the company was purchased for £400 million ($650M USD / €486M), although later reports estimated the acquisition was valued at over £500 million. The acquisition reportedly took place after Facebook ended negotiations with DeepMind Technologies in 2013, which resulted in no agreement or purchase of the company. One of DeepMind's conditions for Google was that they establish an AI Ethics committee.

Scientific work
DeepMind Technologie's goal is to "solve intelligence", which they are trying to achieve by combining "the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms". They are trying to formalize intelligence in order to not only implement it into machines, but also understand the human brain, as Demis Hassabis explains: "[...] Attempting to distil intelligence into an algorithmic construct may prove to be the best path to understanding some of the enduring mysteries of our minds."

Currently the company's focus is on publishing research on computer systems that are able to play games and developing these systems. Ranging from strategy games such as Go to arcade games. According to Shane Legg human-level machine intelligence can be achieved "when a machine can learn to play a really wide range of games from perceptual stream input and output, and transfer understanding across games[...]." Research describing an AI playing seven different Atari video games reportedly led to their acquisition by Google.

Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning
As opposed to other AI's, such as IBM's Deepblue or Watson, which were developed for a pre-defined purpose and only function within its merit, DeepMind claims that their system is not pre-programmed: it learns from experience, using only raw pixels as data input. They test the system on video games, notably early arcade games, such as Space Invaders or Breakout. Without altering the code, the AI begins to understand how to play the game. And after some time plays a better game than any human ever could. Applying their system on games throughout the history, the development of DeepMind's AI is currently in the 1990s; making its AI learn to play simple 3D games.