Google will grant $20 million to scientists and researchers for scientific discoveries using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Along with that, the tech giant will also allocate cloud services worth 2 million dollars. Google DeepMind co-founder and CU Demis Hassabis announced this initiative last Monday.
It's part of a larger effort by big tech companies to connect with young innovators and startups. For this, Google has adopted strategies such as employee acquisition, equity investment (buying shares in startups or companies) and cloud partnerships (where they collaborate through cloud services). Some of these issues have caught the attention of regulators.
Google's 19-year-old charitable arm has announced a new donation from Google.org. Google will fund research and education institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide without taking any equity.
However, Google's venture will work like investments and partnerships in other big tech companies. Google is looking to build relationships with scientists and researchers by directly paying 'cash' and providing critical infrastructure to run their projects. Through this, Google will be able to attract new customers working on projects that require AI tools and computing in the future. That is, through this initiative, Google is helping to advance science and at the same time, it wants to attract potential future customers for its business.
Google is not the only one adopting this strategy. Last week, Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) announced $110 million in grants and credits to attract AI researchers to its ecosystem.
On the other hand, Google itself has recently taken some similar initiatives with AI. Eligible among these is a fund worth $2 million. It will help specialist research institutes to develop AI technology skills. In addition, Google has announced another grant of equal value for non-profit organizations. This will help further innovation in generative AI programs.
In a blog post, Google.org vice president Maggie Johnson said selected applicants will use AI to solve critical problems in a variety of scientific disciplines. Through this, researchers will work to solve more complex problems by establishing relationships between different scientific fields.
Maggie Johnson also said there is potential for new discoveries through the use of AI technology in areas such as rare and neglected disease research, experimental biology, materials science and resilience.
A Google spokesperson said they don't have a specific target for how many projects they want to fund. But they insist, 'Google wants to give grants to encourage scientific discovery. This means, they are not interested in making small donations. Rather, it will fund prospective research. It will likely fund more than 15 organizations. By 2026, eligible scientists and researchers will be selected and distributed.
It's been an eventful year for Google's DeepMind. Hassabis is one of the three founders of DeepMind. Last March, he was awarded a 'Knighthood' for his contribution to AI technology. Then in October Hassabis and DeepMind director John Jumper won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with another researcher. Jumper and his colleagues developed an artificial intelligence model called AlphaFold. It can predict the structure of proteins. This model helps accelerate research in drug discovery, disease diagnosis and bioengineering.
