DeepMind: Most Innovative AI Research Team Global 2020

Working closely with Google, and acquired by Alphabet Inc. in 2015, DeepMind believes that many fundamental scientific questions, can be answered through the problem-solving systems of artificial general intelligence. The DeepMind research team, in collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital, has made much progress in the understanding of eye disease. The company is helping to improve Google products which now benefit from the DeepMind voice synthesiser WaveNet. A few years ago, DeepMind’s AlphaZero taught itself mastery of chess, shogi (the Chinese version) and Go and beat world champions. The chess community acknowledged that this development was unlike any earlier chess playing engine. According to Garry Kasparov, AlphaZero plays “with a very dynamic style much like my own”. AlphaGo is probably the most powerful Go player in history. There have been hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in top journals that show the wonderfully innovative solutions of this winner. DeepMind is concerned that AI initiatives should proceed safely and ethically, behaving reliably and in ways that we want. After the acquisition, the company established an artificial intelligence ethics board. DeepMind, along with Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft, is a founding member of the Partnership on AI (which considers the society-AI interface). DeepMind scholarships support smart under-represented students and address geographic as well as social imbalances. DeepMind announced on 30 November this year, that its AlphaFold programme had solved the “protein folding problem”. This will fundamentally change biological research, unlocking protein that cause disease. According to Nature magazine: “It will change everything.” The CFI.co judging panel is pleased to recognise DeepMind as the Most Innovative AI Research Team Global 2020.