Google opens AI R&D centre in China as rivalry heats up

Beijing

GOOGLE announced on Wednesday that it will open a new artificial intelligence (AI) research centre in Beijing, tapping China's talent pool in the promising technology despite the US search giant's exclusion from the country's Internet.

AI, especially machine learning, has been an area of intense focus for American tech stalwarts Google, Microsoft and Facebook, and their Chinese competitors Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu as they bid to master what many consider the future of computing.