Alphabet’s Google has consolidated its AI research groups into a single unit, the company’s latest move to avoid being left behind in the AI race.
The change folds Google Research’s Brain team and Alphabet’s DeepMind into one team, CEO Sundar Pichai he said in a blog post Thursday. “The consolidation of all these talents into one focused team, supported by the computational resources of Google, will greatly accelerate our progress in AI,” said Pichai. Demis Hassabis will lead the group as CEO of DeepMind.
Jeff Dean, the executive who has been leading Google’s artificial intelligence and search efforts, will move out of management as part of the reorganization, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss. internal issues. In his new position as Chief Scientist at Google, Dean will work with both Google Research and DeepMind to develop new and more capable AI systems, and he won’t oversee large teams, the people said. He will report directly to Pichai.
London-based Alphabet’s DeepMind has long been known as a unit of Google’s parent company that regularly delivers breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, including its work on AlphaFold, a technology that can predict the shape of proteins, as well as AlphaGo, a program that taught itself to play. Strategy Game Go better than any human on earth. Internally, the unit is usually seen as a group working on AI concepts that may not have direct applications in Google products.
Meanwhile, Google Research was responsible for the technology of “adapters”, which are the building blocks of large language paradigms. This technology powers the existing suite of chatbots, including ChatGPT from Google Bard and OpenAI Inc.
Now, Google’s reorganization appears to be consolidating that research work under one umbrella, Google DeepMind, indicating a stronger integration with the rest of Alphabet. During Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings report in FebruaryThe company announced that starting this year, DeepMind will be included in Alphabet’s costs to reflect how the technology is integrated into other businesses — rather than being part of a “other bet” category of investments with less immediate impact, Alphabet said.
Pichai said in his memo that James Maneka, senior vice president of technology and society at Google, will take over as head of Google research. He said the unit aims to continue its work in areas such as privacy, security, quantum computing, health, climate and responsible artificial intelligence. Manyika also expanded his remit when he was the CEO of Google Clay Bavor He left earlier this year, to take charge of emerging technology projects that Pavor previously oversaw.
Some of Google’s efforts to speed up the rollout of generative AI products in order to compete with OpenAI’s success have left workers feeling frustrated, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Workers said the Mountain View, California-based search giant is making concessions for misinformation and other damages in order to catch up to ChatGPT’s huge success.