Google has recently announced a huge consolidation of their effort on AI projects and research both publicly, in a blog post, and internally, through a leaked video. The merging of two of their research teams, DeepMind, an AI lab, and Google Research’s Brain team into a singular unit, called Google DeepMind, brings more focus and computational power to Google’s AI development which is growing faster every single day. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, gave a detailed explanation of their move and is hopeful that this unification will create stronger AI results and accelerate their AI development.
Google is lagging behind in many of the AI chatbot races, most notably in their attempts to challenge OpenAI’s ChatGPT with their own, Bard. Bard is currently only available to a limited number of people, and early reviews of the project were not very complimentary. Google’s internal meeting also raised concerns about the project, which this new move to bring these teams together hopes to address. There is a hope that the combination of the specialized AI efforts, Google’s immense computational power, and their strong focus on responsibility and safety when it comes to AI, will all work together to create solutions.
The CEO of DeepMind—Demis Hassabis—will be leading the newly formed Google DeepMind, and Google’s own Jeff Dean has been promoted to Chief Scientist, an important role which will oversee AI development and strategy. A spokesperson for DeepMind have reportedly expressed pride in being able to fulfill their mission of ‘solving intelligence’ while still maintaining Google’s full support and operational autonomy.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has a mission of ‘building a better future with technology’. With their focus on safety and responsibility when it comes to AI, and the merging of the two research teams, they hope to realize this mission. Looking at this new venture, they seem to be off to a good start and so the future of AI research with Google looks bright.
