Alphabet’s Google has consolidated its artificial intelligence (AI) research groups into one unit, the company’s latest move to keep from falling behind in the AI race.
Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said in a blog post, the change folds the Brain team from Google Research and Alphabet’s DeepMind into one team.
“Combining all this talent into one focused team, backed by the computational resources of Google, will significantly accelerate our progress in AI,” Pichai said.
Demis Hassabis will lead the group as CEO of DeepMind.
According to two sources, Jeff Dean, the executive leading Google’s AI and research efforts, will leave management as part of the reorganisation. In his new role as Google’s chief scientist, Dean will work with both Google Research and DeepMind to develop new, more capable AI systems. Now, Google’s reorganisation appears to consolidate that research work under one umbrella, Google DeepMind, signalling tighter integration with the rest of Alphabet. In February, the company announced that DeepMind would be included in Alphabet’s corporate costs starting this year to reflect how the technology is being incorporated into other businesses—rather than as part of the “Other Bets” category of investments with less immediate impact, Alphabet said.
James Manyika, Google’s senior vice president of technology and society, will take over as head of Google Research. The unit is meant to continue its work on areas like privacy and security, quantum computing, health, climate and responsible AI.
Bard to write codes
Google said on Friday it would update Bard, its generative AI chatbot, to help people write code to develop software.
