Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is looking to hire artificial intelligence experts in Beijing as part of an effort to ramp up its presence in China.
The company is advertising at least 20 positions in Beijing – four of which are AI-related.
These include roles that work on natural language processing, data compression and various types of machine learning.
This is despite Google’s search engine being banned in the country.
It’s a sign that though foreign firms are wary of China’s government, they are willing to continue investment to get a slice of the world’s biggest internet market.
The company is advertising at least 20 positions in Beijing – four of which are AI-related. These include roles that work on natural language processing and machine learning (stock image)
The move comes as the Chinese government set out an ambitious plan to beat the US and become the global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.
In total there are 60 available positions in Beijing and Shanghai and inside sources say Google is hoping to use the new recruits to improve the quality of its algorithms.
Two of the jobs relate to machine-learning using Google Cloud, which doesn’t currently operate in China, writes Fox Business.
‘China has a lot of data from mobile payments, gaming, social, search and news,’ said Kitty Fok, China managing director at consulting firm IDC.
‘Technology companies like Google are keen to learn what’s going on and getting large amounts of data to create AI algorithms is very important to them.’
It has long been speculated Google wants to get its search engine back in China, which could boost the dominance of its web advertising.
As well as Google, Facebook and Twitter are among the companies blocked on mainland China.
After a large cyberattack in 2010, Google pulled away from China after tracing the attack to Chinese hackers.
However, this move suggests the company is now looking to expand its presence in the country again.
At the same time, Chinese internet rivals such as Tencent Holdings are looking to open up AI research facilities in the US.
It has long been speculated Google wants to get its search engine back in China which could boost the dominance of its web advertising (stock image)
Alibaba and Baidu already have research and development centres in Silicon Valley.
In June, it was revealed the US wanted to heighten the security of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley to better shield sensitive technologies seen as vital to US national security
Of particular concern is China’s interest in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have increasingly attracted Chinese capital in recent years.
The worry is that cutting-edge technologies developed in the United States could be used by China to bolster its military capabilities and perhaps even push it ahead in strategic industries.
The US government is now looking to strengthen the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of US companies on national security grounds.