“Deep learning” is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that aims to create machines that process and analyze data the way the human brain does. Over the last few years, deep learning has become a priority for a who’s who of tech firms including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and even Netflix.

In 2011, Google tapped Stanford professor Andrew Ng to oversee the design of the Google Brain. When it was unveiled it consisted of 16,000 computers, each dedicated to mimicking some aspect of human brain activity. The system demonstrated the ability to recognize cats in 10 million images taken from YouTube videos. Currently, among other things, the Google Brain is used as part of the speech recognition system in the Android operating system.

In 2013, Chinese search giant Baidu opened an AI research center in Silicon Valley. Today, the company announced the hiring of Ng, who is also the co-founder of Coursera, to head up both its Sunnyvale lab and its Beijing R&D center. It is unclear exactly what Ng will be working on but it is likely that the company will seek to improve its Chinese to English translation service, its ad placement technology and its voice search service.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to build an international research organization from scratch. I’ve been super excited about AI for a long time, and this is an opportunity for me to return to that,” Ng told Wired.

Additional information about deep learning, including software, data sets, tutorials and demos can be found at Deeplearning.net.