A Look at Google's AI Explosion

 Somewhat simplified, but based on measures like papers generated, and providing capabilities publicly, very impressive.   Note that this not only about publishing papers, but also writing fundamental code that can be reused.   The apparent openness impresses me most.  Still waiting to see more of it in forms we can use, like in Google Assistant.  In TechnologyReview:

" ...  The publication explosion is no accident. Google has more than tripled the number of machine learning researchers working for the company over the last few years, according to Yoshua Bengio, a deep-learning specialist at the University of Montreal. “They have recruited like crazy,” he says.

And to capture the first-round picks from computation labs, companies can’t only offer a Silicon Valley-sized salary.  “It’s hard to hire people just for money,” says Konrad Kording, a computational neuroscientist at Northwestern University. “The top people care about advancing the world, and that means writing papers the world can use, and write code the world can use.” ... " 

Google’s AI Explosion in One Chart
Surging investment in machine learning is vaulting Google into the scientific stratosphere. by Antonio Regalado  ... "