2010 ; 6 years ago 2010 09 23 1 headquarters 5 new street square 2 london ec4a 3tw uk founder s demis hassabis shane legg mustafa suleyman ceo demis hassabis industry artificial intelligence employees 100 may 2015 3 parent alphabet inc. website www.deepmind.com deepmind technologies limited is a british artificial intelligence company founded in september 2010 . it was acquired by google in 2014 . the company has created a neural network that learns how to play video games in a fashion similar to that of humans 4 as well as a neural turing machine or a neural network that may be able to access an external memory like a conventional turing machine resulting in a computer that mimics the short term memory of the human brain . 5 the company made headlines in 2016 after its alphago program beat a human professional go player for the first time . 6 contents 1 history 2 machine learning 2.1 deep reinforcement learning 2.2 alphago 3 healthcare 3.1 controversies 4 references 5 external links history edit in 2010 the start up was founded by demis hassabis shane legg and mustafa suleyman . 7 8 hassabis and legg first met at university college london s gatsby computational neuroscience unit . 9 on 26 january 2014 google announced the company had acquired deepmind for 500 million 10 11 12 13 14 15 that it had agreed to take over deepmind technologies . since then major venture capital firms horizons ventures and founders fund have invested in the company 16 as well as entrepreneurs scott banister 17 and elon musk . 18 jaan tallinn was an early investor and an adviser to the company . 19 the sale to google took place after facebook reportedly ended negotiations with deepmind technologies in 2013 . 20 the company was afterwards renamed google deepmind and kept that name for about two years . 2 in 2014 deepmind received the company of the year award by cambridge computer laboratory . 21 after google s acquisition the company established an artificial intelligence ethics board . 22 the ethics board for ai research remains a mystery with both google and deepmind declining to reveal who sits on the board . 23 deepmind together with amazon google facebook ibm and microsoft is a member of partnership on ai an organization devoted to the society ai interface . 24 machine learning edit deepmind technologies s goal is to solve intelligence 25 which they are trying to achieve by combining the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general purpose learning algorithms . 25 they are trying to formalize intelligence 26 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 . 27 google research has released a paper in 2016 regarding ai safety and avoiding undesirable behaviour during the ai learning process . 28 deepmind has also released several publications via their website . 29 to date the company has published research on computer systems that are able to play games and developing these systems ranging from strategy games such as go 30 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 ... . 31 research describing an ai playing seven different atari video games pong breakout space invaders seaquest beamrider enduro and q bert reportedly led to their acquisition by google . 4 hassabis has mentioned the popular e sport game starcraft as a possible future challenge since it requires a high level of strategic thinking and handling imperfect information . 32 deep reinforcement learning edit as opposed to other ais such as ibm s deep blue or watson which were developed for a pre defined purpose and only function within its scope deepmind claims that their system is not pre programmed it learns from experience using only raw pixels as data input . technically it uses deep learning on a convolutional neural network with a novel form of q learning a form of model free reinforcement learning . 2 33 they test the system on video games notably early arcade games such as space invaders or breakout . 33 34 without altering the code the ai begins to understand how to play the game and after some time plays for a few games most notably breakout a more efficient game than any human ever could . 34 for most games space invaders ms pacman q bert for example deepmind plays below the current world record . the application of deepmind s ai to video games is currently for games made in the 1970s and 1980s with work being done on more complex 3d games such as doom which first appeared in the early 1990s . 34 alphago edit main article alphago in october 2015 a computer go program called alphago powered by deepmind beat the european go champion fan hui a 2 dan out of 9 dan possible professional five to zero . 35 this is the first time an artificial intelligence ai defeated a professional player . 6 previously computers were only known to have played go at amateur level . 35 36 go is considered much more difficult for computers to win compared to other games like chess due to the much larger number of possibilities making it prohibitively difficult for traditional ai methods such as brute force . 35 36 the announcement of the news was delayed until 27 january 2016 to coincide with the publication of a paper in the journal nature describing the algorithms used . 35 in march 2016 it beat lee sedol a 9th dan go player and one of the highest ranked players in the world with 4 1 in a five game match . healthcare edit in july 2016 a collaboration between deepmind and moorfields eye hospital was announced . 37 deepmind would be applied to the analysis of anonymised eye scans searching for early signs of diseases leading to blindness . in august 2016 a research programme with university college london hospital was announced with the aim of developing an algorithm that can automatically differentiate between healthy and cancerous tissues in head and neck areas . 38 controversies edit in april 2016 new scientist obtained a copy of a data sharing agreement between deepmind and the royal free london nhs foundation trust which operates the three london hospitals which an estimated 1.6 million patients are treated annually . the revelation has exposed the ease with which private companies can obtain highly sensitive medical information without patient consent . the agreement shows deepmind health is gaining access to admissions discharge and transfer data accident and emergency pathology and radiology and critical care at these hospitals . this included personal details such as whether patients had been diagnosed with hiv suffered from depression or had ever undergone an abortion . 39 40 this led to some public outcry and officials from google have yet to make a statement but many regard this move as controversial and question the legality of the acquisition generally . 23 the concerns were widely reported and have led to a complaint to the information commissioner s office ico arguing that the data should be pseudonymised and encrypted . 41 in may 2016 new scientist published a further article claiming that the project had failed to secure approval from the confidentiality advisory group of the medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency . 42 references edit deepmind technologies limited overview free company information from companies house . companies house . retrieved 2016 03 13 . a b c mnih volodymyr ; kavukcuoglu koray ; silver david 26 february 2015 . human level control through deep reinforcement learning . nature . 518 7540 529 33 . bibcode 2015natur .518 . .529 m. doi 10.1038 nature14236 . pmid 25719670 . retrieved 25 february 2015 . ceo demis hassabis . a b the last ai breakthrough deepmind made before google bought it . the physics arxiv blog . retrieved 12 october 2014 . best of 2014 google s secretive deepmind startup unveils a neural turing machine mit technology review a b premi re d faite d un professionnel du go contre une intelligence artificielle . le monde . 27 january 2016 . google buys u.k. artificial intelligence company deepmind . bloomberg . 27 january 2014 . retrieved 13 november 2014 . google makes 400m move in quest for artificial intelligence . financial times . 27 january 2014 . retrieved 13 november 2014 . demis hassabis 15 facts about the deepmind technologies founder . the guardian . retrieved 12 october 2014 . google to buy artificial intelligence company deepmind . reuters . 26 january 2014 . retrieved 12 october 2014 . google acquires uk ai startup deepmind . the guardian . retrieved 27 january 2014 . report of acquisition techcrunch . techcrunch . retrieved 27 january 2014 . oreskovic alexei . reuters report . reuters . retrieved 27 january 2014 . google acquires artificial intelligence start up deepmind . the verge . retrieved 27 january 2014 . google acquires ai pioneer deepmind technologies . ars technica . retrieved 27 january 2014 . deepmind buy heralds rise of the machines . financial times . retrieved 14 october 2014 . deepmind technologies investors . retrieved 12 october 2014 . cuthbertson anthony . elon musk artificial intelligence potentially more dangerous than nukes . international business times uk . recode.net deepmind technologies acquisition . retrieved 27 january 2014 . google beats facebook for acquisition of deepmind technologies . retrieved 27 january 2014 . hall of fame awards to celebrate the success of companies founded by computer laboratory graduates . . university of cambridge . retrieved 12 october 2014 . inside google s mysterious ethics board . forbes . 3 february 2014 . retrieved 12 october 2014 . a b http www.theguardian.com commentisfree 2016 may 04 googles deepmind shouldnt be sucking up our nhs records in secret home partnership on artificial intelligence to benefit people and society . 2016 . retrieved 15 october 2016 . a b deepmind technologies website . deepmind technologies . retrieved 11 october 2014 . legg shane ; veness joel 29 september 2011 . an approximation of the universal intelligence measure . arxiv 1109.5951 cs.ai . hassabis demis 23 february 2012 . model the brain s algorithms pdf . nature . retrieved 12 october 2014 . amodei dario ; olah chris ; steinhardt jacob ; christiano paul ; schulman john ; man dan 2016 06 21 . concrete problems in ai safety . arxiv 1606.06565 cs.ai . publications deepmind . deepmind . retrieved 2016 09 11 . huang shih chieh ; m ller martin 12 july 2014 . investigating the limits of monte carlo tree search methods in computer go . lecture notes in computer science . lecture notes in computer science . springer . 8427 39 48 . doi 10.1007 978 3 319 09165 5 4 . isbn 978 3 319 09164 8 . q & a with shane legg on risks from ai . 17 june 2011 . retrieved 12 october 2014 . http www.theverge.com 2016 3 10 11192774 demis hassabis interview alphago google deepmind ai a b mnih volodymyr ; kavukcuoglu koray ; silver david ; graves alex ; antonoglou ioannis ; wierstra daan ; riedmiller martin 12 december 2013 . playing atari with deep reinforcement learning . arxiv 1312.5602 cs.lg . a b c deepmind artificial intelligence fdot14 . 19 april 2014 . a b c d google achieves ai breakthrough by beating go champion . bbc news . 27 january 2016 . a b research blog alphago mastering the ancient game of go with machine learning . google research blog .