Artificial intelligence (AI) will have a defining impact on the world in the decade ahead, much as the web has for the past two decades, predicted the CEO of Movidius Remi El-Ouazzane, who is creating up to 100 AI jobs in Dublin in the coming year.

Movidius’ chip technology has been at the centre of developments by Google to create Project Tango smartphones that can sense their immediate environment. Movidius is also collaborating with internet of things player DAQRI to create machine-vision technologies, aka computers that can see.

Movidius recently raised €38m in a move that will enable it to generate 100 new jobs in Dublin.

In the last two years, Movidius has established offices in Silicon Valley, continued to scale its R&D team, appointed new members to its technical advisory board, collaborated with new customers and partners, and launched the next generation of its vision processor for mobile and connected devices.

Movidius brings AI to the network edge

“This notion of adding more and more brain power to your drone, augmented reality, security cameras or robots, we are at the confluence of a lot of things happening.”

This confluence combines the vast datasets being gathered by internet companies like Google (Alphabet) and Facebook and the creation of algorithms that will result in a whole set of new experiences.

“For example, we are working in the drone space to allow drones to be autonomous and sense and avoid obstacles and go from A to B without assistance. We are working on a robotic vacuum cleaner that will map your entire house and will go to wherever there has been a spill. We are also working with companies like DAQRI to allow people to basically augment themselves.”

The artificial intelligence revolution is in its early stages and already Dublin is benefiting as Movidius plans to recruit up to 100 artificial intelligence experts in Dublin.

At the same time, Accenture today announced plans to locate an artificial intelligence lab in Dublin.

“Dublin is a great city and we believe we can attract a lot of talent from all over Europe and we have plans to hire between 50 and 100 people in the next 12 months here locally to grow the team and become the leader in artificial intelligence.

“I think we have the rare occasion to be a leader in the AI field for the next decade. AI will do in the next decade what the web has in the last two decades,” concluded El-Ouazzane.