San Francisco, London, Montreal, Paris and New York have all developed a reputation for being hotbeds of artificial intelligence research over the years.Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two biggest cities, have not. But that could be about to change.Google announced Monday that it plans to set up a new Google Research Australia lab in Sydney as part of a 1 billion Australian dollar ($729 million) investment in Australia. The lab will research everything from AI to quantum computing.The move has been welcomed by AI researchers in Australia who told CNBC that there have been limited opportunities for AI gurus in the country over the years.  Stephen Merity, an Australian AI researcher who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, told CNBC that Google should have launched Google Research Australia years ago, adding that there are many well-known luminaries in the field from Australia.“They almost all had to leave Australia to get opportunities,” he said. “Those who stayed were under-utilized, including those at Google Sydney.”Google works on a handful of projects in Sydney but the scope of the search giant’s research has been relatively limited compared to the likes of Mountain View, where Google is headquartered, London, Zurich and Tokyo.cnbc.com