Google Builds China Workforce to Develop Machine Learning & AI
Google Builds China Workforce to Develop Artificial Intelligence
Alphabet unit is seeking engineers to fill jobs related
to AI, cloud computing in country seen as having certain advantages over U.S.
By Alyssa Abkowitz in Beijing and Liza Lin in Shanghai Sept.
4, 2017 6:54 a.m. ET
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is ramping up its presence in
China, hiring engineers to specialize in one of technology’s hottest corners:
artificial intelligence.
The Silicon Valley behemoth has recently posted at least
four AI-related jobs on its career site in Beijing, including a technical lead
to develop a team to work on natural language processing, data compression and
other machine learning technologies. Two of the jobs are related to machine
learning in Google’s cloud-computing operation.
Google Cloud currently doesn’t operate in China. The
company would need a local partner and special licenses to establish the
business here.
Broadly defined, AI involves computers that learn from
the information they process. China, with hundreds of millions of people
connected to the internet and few qualms about privacy, is seen as having
advantages over the U.S. as a place to advance parts of the technology.
“China has a lot of data from mobile payments, gaming,
social, search and news,” said Kitty Fok, China managing director at consulting
firm IDC. “Technology companies like Google are keen to learn what’s going on
and getting large amounts of data to create AI algorithms is very important to
them.”
There are nearly 60 positions available in Beijing and
Shanghai combined on the company’s careers web page. A person familiar with the
positions said Google is focused on hiring top talent and improving the quality
of its algorithms.
Google pulled back from China in 2010 on concerns over
censorship and after a cyberattack in which some of the company’s proprietary
computer code was stolen. Google said it had traced the attack to Chinese
hackers. The company’s search engine can be accessed here only by using virtual
private networks, or VPNs, to bypass the government’s complex internet
filtering system, known as the “Great Firewall.”
Even so, Google has continued to maintain some operations
in China and some analysts have said they believe the company is looking to expand
its presence. This past spring, the southern city of Wuzhen hosted a three-game
rematch in the ancient strategy game of Go between Google’s AI program AlphaGo
and China’s 19-year-old human world champion. At the event, Google Cloud
executive Jia Li said she was looking to hire AI engineers in China to add to
its more than 500 employees in Beijing and Shanghai.
While the Mountain View, Calif., company is building its
workforce here, Chinese rivals are setting up AI research-and-development
facilities in the U.S.
Earlier this year, Chinese internet giant Tencent
Holdings Ltd. said it would open an AI center in Seattle to focus on speech
recognition and natural language understanding. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and
Baidu Inc. have R&D centers in Silicon Valley.
—Yang Jie contributed to this article.
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