Facebook is opening its second AI lab, this time in paris, as the social network looks to find smarter ways of sifting through the food of consumer data it generates for advertisers.
The new artificial intelligence lab planned for Paris comes after building a dedicated AI team that spans its offices in New York and Silicon Valley.
The New York University professor who oversees the company’s AI work, Yann LeCun, was born and educated in Paris.
The team will work on “ambitious long-term projects”, including natural-language processing and speech and image recognition.
Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schorepfer said the threat of AI had been “overblown” in recent months.
Facebook, along with Google, IBM, Microsoft and other technology companies, are increasingly taking an interest in artificial intelligence, which for decades was the preserve of academia.
Schroepfer said the work being done in industry “complemented” that being done in academic research.
All Facebook’s AI research was openly published to allow others to benefit, he added.
“Our work in AI research is still relatively early. But we’ve built a terrific team and have already made some encouraging progress, and we’re excited to see where this work takes us and what it will allow us to build for the people we serve,” Facebook said in its blog to announce the new lab.
AI is one of three pillars of investment for the company – the others being virtual reality and connectivity.
Initially six research scientists will be based in the Paris lab, growing to 12 by the end of the year.
Facebook’s US lab opened in December 2013. It now employs more than 40 researchers drawn from academia and industry.