Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has launched a new AI-focused group, Google DeepMind, which combines its existing DeepMind and Brain teams.
This move is expected to significantly accelerate progress in AI, according to a blog post by Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
The creation of this new unit will help to build more capable AI systems more safely and responsibly. The new group will be led by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis as CEO, while Google and Google DeepMind’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, will serve as Brain co-founder.
The first project under Dean’s leadership will be a series of powerful, multimodal AI models. Meanwhile, Hassabis will lead the development of the company’s most capable and responsible general AI systems. These systems will ultimately help power the next generation of Alphabet’s products and services.
DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 and has worked on groundbreaking projects such as AlphaGo, a deep learning program that beat one of the world’s highest-ranked Go players in 2016.
Brain, Google’s deep learning unit, has also contributed to notable projects like Google Translate and TensorFlow, an open-source software library that enables users to train their own neural networks.
With this move, Google joins other tech giants such as Microsoft in investing billions of dollars into the development of AI technology.
In February 2023, Google partnered with ChatGPT rival Anthropic to develop “reliable and responsible AI.” It also recently launched Google Bard, a conversational AI service that has garnered mixed reactions from employees.
Despite concerns around the development of AI, Pichai is optimistic about the technology’s future. He argues that more people are starting to worry about its implications, and the resulting conversations are starting in a serious way.
As DeepMind and Brain come together under the Google DeepMind banner, the company is poised to achieve even greater breakthroughs in AI.
