
Teaming up with Oxford University on Artificial Intelligence - __Joker
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2014/10/teaming-up-with-oxford-university-on.html
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iamdanfox
I'll be interested to see what impact this has on the overall CS department at
Oxford. CS in the UK is growing, but still has a much lower profile than in
the States. In Stanford, CS is a well-known (!), popular major whereas here in
Oxford, the 2013-14 CS class consists of just 69 people. [1]

I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

[1]:[http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/ugadmissions/how_to_apply/](http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/ugadmissions/how_to_apply/)

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JoeAltmaier
Maybe Oxford is a little slower to adopt 'fad' majors. Computer science was
invented in 1965 at Carnegie Mellon. Only 50 years have passed - Oxford is
just noticing this modern field and may come to accept it as a lasting
discipline in another 50?

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tormeh
Oxbridge follows the British consensus that values general education more than
the specialist fields. If you want the best engineering education in the UK
you go to Imperial College.

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CHY872
To those who read this, this statement is completely incorrect. It's actually
very interesting how (in general) Britain's degrees are far more specialised
from far earlier (than the US), and this is no different for either Oxford or
Cambridge. I won't comment on the fanboyism :)

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tormeh
Well, the impression I have is that Oxbridge is for scientist and
theoreticians, while Imperial is for the profession studies - engineering and
medicine, basically.

I got the generalist thing from here:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11136511](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11136511)

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tortos123
Its nice to see that the world is moving towards AI.

Sky-net Incoming :)

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Udo
Only a minuscule fraction of people who work with/in AI are doing general
artificial intelligence. The rest is really more about making sense of the
vast and growing amounts of data our world produces. The non-human
intelligences that benefit from this are corporations, not artificial minds.
It's actually sad that AGI research is still a fringe idea.

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wuschel
I am not into the research field of general artifical intelligence. How does
the "Human Brain Project" fit into this matter? It seems to me like the EU is
directing quite a financial package into the direction of AGI, at least when
it comes to understanding human brain activity and functionality.

link: [https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/](https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/)

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Udo
The Human Brain Project is a basic science endeavor, it's not directly related
to AGI research.

In principle, there are two directions AGI work is going: one is the brain
emulation approach, the other is aiming at creating a synthetic mind from
scratch. Obviously, this is a spectrum with two extreme ends, but compared to
overall AI work being performed by our civilization not a lot of people are
working on this at all (which is surprising considering the implications of
even a moderate success).

A lot of the brain simulation and mapping projects concern themselves not with
running an actual mind on silicon. Instead, they are fundamental science
projects with goals like modeling neuronal behavior or helping out in
pharmaceutical research. Even the "neuron-like" processors that are starting
to come out right now are not intended for AGI.

