Facebook's new AI research lab opens in Montreal

Facebook is opening another AI research lab as it looks to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities.

The company's fourth dedicated AI lab is following the footsteps of Google and Microsoft by being located in Montreal, Canada.

The lab, which will initially number just ten employees, plus interns, should rise to 30 in a couple of years, will be led by Joelle Pineau, an associate professor at Montreal’s McGill University. Pineau will keep her academic position.

"I love that job, but there comes a time when you're up for a new challenge and finding out about a new way of doing research”, Pineau said during a briefing on the news.

"Nowadays, so much machine learning research is happening in industry."

Facebook is clearly betting a lot on AI. Besides opening the new lab, it has also invested an additional $5.75 million to support AI research at McGill, the University of Montreal, as well as the Montreal Institute of Learning, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Besides Google, Microsoft and Facebook, IBM is also betting big on AI, recently investing $240 into AI research at the MIT.

"Our goal with artificial intelligence is to build systems that are better than people at perception -- seeing, hearing, language and so on," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the company's F8 developer conference earlier this year.

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