Facebook and NYU to Open Artificial Intelligence Lab

Facebook and New York University (NYU) have partnered to open a Center for Artificial Intelligence, close to the latter's campus in Manhattan. Machine learning scientist Professor Yann LeCun will join as Director of the new laboratory on 1st January.

Facebook is building the team across three locations: its headquarters in Melo Park, California, New York City, and London, UK, with the aim of extracting knowledge from its massive data sets.

LeCun (pictured), a professor at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, is a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. At AT&T Bell Laboratories, he developed a pattern-recognition model whose architecture mimics, in part, the visual cortex of animals and humans. Using this breakthrough, AT&T deployed a check-reading system that by the late 1990s was reading about 20% of all the checks written in the US. He is also regarded as one of the leading scientists in 'deep learning' - a branch of machine learning in which researchers aim to have machines emulate humans' auditory and visual systems, and which is used for applications such as speech and image recognition.

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's CTO, comments: 'As one of the most respected thinkers in this field, Yann has done groundbreaking research in deep learning and computer vision. We're thrilled to welcome him to Facebook.'

Web sites: www.facebook.com and www.nyu.edu .