Facebook Moves Forward With Big Plans for Artificial Intelligence

by Kurt Wagner @kurtwagner8 for @mashable

The company is reportedly moving forward with a new research laboratory intended to “bring about major changes in artificial intelligence.” Yann LeCun, a New York University professor of computer and neural sciences, posted about the new laboratory on Facebook and Google+.

LeCun’s post also includes news of a partnership between Facebook and NYU’s Center for Data Science intended to carry out research in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. He added that Mark Zuckerberg would announce the new laboratory on Monday at a conference in the Lake Tahoe area.

Facebook first formed the AI team, which currently has eight members, in September. The social network responded to Mashable‘s request for comment by highlighting the comments Zuckerberg made during Facebook’s last earnings call in October.

“The goal here is to use new approaches in AI to help make sense of all the content that people share so we can generate new insights about the world to answer people’s questions,” he said. “Over time, I think it’s going to be possible to build services that are much more natural to interact with and can help solve many more problems than any existing technology today.”

With millions of users actively sharing personal information to Facebook, it’s easy to envision the role machine learning could play in deciphering this data. Facebook routinely talks about putting the right content, including ad, in front of the right people. Artificial intelligence could help the company achieve better results for targeted ads and news feed improvements.

LeCun claims the new group will have teams in multiple offices, including New York, London and Menlo Park, Calif. The news was first reported AllThingsD.