Facebook FAIR(ies) in Paris

Paris is buzzing about the announcement of the new european research center of Facebook in Paris. This was already known around April/May. Six  "fairies" are supposed to have joined Facebook FAIR, or Facebook Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research center. They will do some magical data science (or dédoménologie), under the guidance of Yann LeCun. He was the host of the day "Data Science and Massive Data Analysis" on the campus of ESIEE Paris, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (Paris at large) on June 12th 2014. It's not eerie, it's ESIEE.

After Menlo Park and New York, this center, the third and the first outside the US, has been attracted to City of lights.  Where they will bring their TORCH for our enlightenment. Attracted by  moths around a flame, by the local talents and excellent education facilities in artificial intelligence and computer science, and probably substantial financial incentives.They are also nearing Google headquarters in Paris. Google's HQ inauguration enjoyed the presence of former rightist président Nicolas Sarkozy. Will there be a people appearance of leftist François Hollande? Internet giants (GAFA, ABTX) are waging wars in our data. Remember Bertrand Russell, for who "War does not determine who is right - only who is left".

Real fairy

Those first  fairies could be (provisional, from Facebook choisit Paris pour installer sa nouvelle équipe de recherche européenne sur l’intelligence artificielle):

Camille Couprie (NYU, on leave from IFPEN)

Florent Perronnin (form. Panasonic and Xerox)

Hervé Jégou (INRIA)

Holger Schwenk (DeepLingo, université du Maine). Nota: the Facebook link is not active (201506032340), and points to G. Synnaeve's as if Holger was not in charge yet. His other page.

Gabriel Synnaeve (Ecole normale supérieure)

Nicolas Usunier (UTC)

So a large portion of the fairies are male, which may not be fair to the magical creatures, knowing that female fairies usually have more power. Two handful more talents would joint by the end of the year, 25 to 50 in the years to come. Figures vary with sources, depending on permanent positions or PhD and post-doctorants. That is big data.

Sources:
Google news full coverage
Facebook opens an artificial intelligence research lab in Paris

Facebook ouvre un laboratoire d’intelligence artificielle à Paris

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Intelligence Artificielle : Facebook ouvre un centre de recherche à Paris