金融时报:谷歌的中国寻“宝”之旅

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2022年03月30日

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谷歌的中国寻“宝”之旅

尽管谷歌几乎完全被屏蔽在中国之外，但他们并不愿放弃这片技术人才的沃土。近日，谷歌发出广告在北京招聘4名机器学习专家。今年5月份，谷歌在于上海附近召开的AI高峰会议上暗示，他们正寻求成立首个设在中国的AI研究团队。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

ramp[ræmp] vt.加速

cachet['kæ?e?] n.优良标志

savvy['sævi] adj.有见识的

summit['s?m?t] n.顶点；最高阶层

equivalent[?'kw?v?l?nt] adj.等价的，相等的

Google building artificial intelligence team in Beijing(445 words)

By Yuan Yang

Despite being all but locked out of China, Google is ramping up efforts to tap a vital technology resource in the country: engineering talent.

The US tech giant is advertising for artificial-intelligence experts in Beijing, where it has expanded rapidly in the past few years. Google hinted in May, at an AI summit near Shanghai, that it was looking to set up its first China-based AI research team.

The move pits Google in the race for talent against domestic group Baidu, which is also headquartered in Beijing’s northwestern tech village and has been stepping up its own efforts to hire AI researchers in Beijing and Silicon Valley.

“Google’s recruiting creates additional pressures for [its competitors],” said Mark Natkin of Beijing-based tech research firm Marbridge Consulting. “There’s still great benefits for a Chinese engineer going to work for a large US firm, in the same way there’s [more] cachet in going to a second-tier UK university than a top Chinese one,” he added.

Although Google’s search engine has been blocked in China since 2010, the company has maintained a presence in the country and has made progress in mending relations, most recently by collaborating with local government on the AI summit in the town of Wuzhen.

It has relaunched Google Translate as a Chinese-language mobile app, and earlier this year a senior official told the Financial Times that relations with Google were improving.

But its Google Play app store is blocked in China — home to a third of the world’s users of Google’s Android smartphone operating system.

For its part, China’s government considers technological innovations such as AI key to reviving its slowing economy, and has outlined plans to become the world’s premier AI innovation hub by 2030.

China has the benefit of huge pools of personal data to feed into AI research, and a vast market for AI applications for its smartphone-savvy consumers. But experts say it lags behind the US in fundamental AI research.

Analysts say that while Beijing’s universities are turning out plenty of computer-science talent, there is a lack of top-level figures such as Baidu’s former chief scientist Andrew Ng, who left the company earlier this year.

Four of 20 positions being advertised by Google in Beijing are for its machine learning programme — part of its AI research initiative — and require expert qualifications, such as those equivalent to an assistant professor’s.

Google’s more than 600 employees in mainland China include an advertising sales team, where business is booming as a result of Chinese companies’ desire to attract foreign customers, and engineers working on Google’s still-blocked search engine.

Google declined to make any immediate comment on its AI hiring plans.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.In the past few years, Google____.

A. set up a headquarter in Beijing’s tech village.

B. has been expanding rapidly in Beijing.

C. set up its China-based AI research team.

D. attended several AI summit in Shanghai.

答案(1)

2.Which of the following products of Google is accessible in China?

A. Google search engine.

B. Google Translate.

C. Google Play app store.