Google X (Top Secret Lab)

According to a NYT article published today, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is leading a Xerox PARC-esque ground-breaking, top secret lab at "an undisclosed Bay Area location" working on "100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas." That lab is known as Google X.

With a team of technology industry innovators,

• Sebastian Thrun, "one of the world’s top robotics and artificial intelligence experts, who teaches computer science at Stanford and invented the world’s first driverless car"
• Andrew Ng "another Stanford professor, who specializes in applying neuroscience to artificial intelligence to teach robots and machines to operate like people"
• Johnny Chung Lee "a specialist in human-computer interaction" who "came to Google X from Microsoft this year after helping develop Microsoft’s Kinect, the video game player that responds to human movement and voice"

Google X is working to develop new products such as

• Household items connected to the Internet such as refrigerators, garden planers, coffee pots and lightbulbs so that they could be controlled by your computer or mobile device
• Driverless cars ("Unimpressed by the innovative spirit of Detroit automakers, Google now is considering manufacturing them in the United States")
• And, an elevator to outer space. Yes, a space elevator.

New York Times - "Google’s Lab of Wildest Dreams"