Google has announced the formation of a new subsidiary dubbed Google DeepMind. This division will unite Google Research’s DeepMind and Google Brain teams, and will work closely with other Google product divisions to generate AI research and products.
The business will form a scientific board overseen by DeepMind’s VP of Research, Koray Kavukcuoglu, to assess research progress and direction. Eli Collins, currently the VP of Product at Google Research, will take over as VP of Product at Google DeepMind. The Google DeepMind research leadership team will comprise Zoubin Ghahramani, the Lead of Google Brain, who will report to Kavukcuoglu. Jeff Dean, co-founder of Google Brain, will serve as head scientist for Google Research and Google DeepMind.
Although Google Research will remain an autonomous organization, it will focus on basic advancements in computer science across several domains while reporting to James Manyika, Google’s SVP of Technology and Society.
According to Demis Hassabis, DeepMind Co-founder and CEO, the establishment of Google DeepMind will bring together AI talent, processing capacity, infrastructure, and resources to produce the next generation of AI breakthroughs and products across Google and Alphabet. Since the acquisition, DeepMind and Google Brain have had a healthy working relationship, although there has been some tension between DeepMind and Alphabet.
Google recently debuted its own AI chatbot, Bard, which has been panned by several employees who have warned that the technology might result in catastrophic damage or death. Despite this, Jen Gennai, Google’s AI governance head, ignored her team’s risk assessment and released Bard to the public in preview. These criticisms might have reportedly led to the formation of DeepMind.
The sources for this piece include articles in TechCrunch and WindowsCentral.