Intel stitches all its AI efforts into one consortium

Global chip giant, Intel, has announced that it is culminating all its artificial intelligence efforts under a single cross-Intel organization called the Artificial Intelligence products Group (AIPG). With this move the company aims to rally the industry around a set of standards for AI that ultimately brings down costs and makes AI more accessible to more people. This does not come as a surprise as the company has been on a mission to become the leader in artificial intelligence, it had announced in November last year that It is assembling wide range of technology options to introduce AI in everything from smart factories and drones to sports, fraud detection and autonomous cars. In the past year, the chipmaker has also invested in Xeon, acquired Nervana Systems, Movidius, Altera and Mobileye for billions of dollars. According to Intel the new entity will be under Naveen Rao, CEO of Nervana Systems, which was acquired by the chip giant last year and will reprise his role as the Vice President and General Manager of AIPG. The AI group will report directly to Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel Corporation. AIPG states that it will align resources from across the company to include engineering, labs and software to build its AI portfolio. Seems that the chip giant is going to stitch all the different AI companies it acquired together to develop AI products and solutions. “In addition, we will be creating an applied AI research lab dedicated to pushing the forefronts of computing. We will be exploring novel architectural and algorithmic approaches to inform future generations of AI. This includes a range of solutions from the data center to edge devices, and from training to inference – all designed to enable Intel and its customers to innovate faster. This will be the home for AI innovation at Intel,” said Rao in an official blog. The company claims, it powers more than 97% of servers deployed in support of machine learning and is committed to advancing the future of AI. Media reports state that this entity could become one of the most important parts of the company as companies move towards enabling AI in their operations. The company too is developing chips that can support automation, image recognition, machine learning capabilities and advanced analytics.