Machine learning and artificial intelligence got a lot of love on Google's Q3 earnings call.
During CEO Sundar Pichai's prepared remarks, he went out of his way to point out that investments in machine learning and artificial intelligence were a continued priority for the company moving forward.
Pichai even went as far as to say that Google was "re-thinking" all of its products to include more AI and machine learning.
In the words of Stanford University's Rob Schapire, the goal of machine learning is "to devise learning algorithms that do the learning automatically without human intervention or assistance."
Those smart algorithms already power Google's voice search and translation, its Photos product, and the new service Now On Tap which anticipates what information you might need before you ask for it.
When Google showed off the product at its developers' conference earlier this year, it was apparent that the smart assistant was miles ahead of Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana.
"Machine learning is a core, transformative way by which we’re re-thinking how we’re doing everything," Pichai said on the call, in response to an analyst question about Google's vision. "We are thoughtfully applying it across all our products, be it search, ads, YouTube, or Play. And we're in early days, but you will see us — in a systematic way — apply machine learning in all these areas."
As Google was reporting earnings, Google's head of research Jeff Dean announced a new Brain Residency Program. The 12-month role will be similar to a Master's or PhD program in deep learning, a branch of machine learning that aims to mimic the brain.
