Google is no longer treating artificial intelligence like a side project—Microsoft and OpenAI have seen to that with the public availability of ChatGPT. Google has already started reorganizing to improve its Bard AI. As part of this effort, it’s merging its two AI research groups into one; Google Brain and DeepMind are now becoming Google DeepMind.
DeepMind used to be the cause célèbre in AI circles with projects like AlphaGo, which beat the world’s best players of the board game Go. There was also AlphaStar, which can kick your butt in Starcraft. DeepMind even worked to improve voice synthesis with its WaveNet technology.
But now, everyone is obsessed with generative AI like ChatGPT and the image generator Dall-E. That’s where Google is focusing its efforts, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has big hopes for what these newly combined teams can do. “Combining all this talent into one focused team, backed by the computational resources of Google, will significantly accelerate our progress in AI,” says Pichai.
The combination of these groups will necessitate some reorganization at the top. DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis will take the top spot at the newly formed Google DeepMind. His job will be to oversee the development of Google’s most powerful generative AIs. Jeff Dean, who started the Brain division and is currently head of Google AI, will step up to the role of chief scientist at Google, reporting directly to PIchai.
DeepMind’s early efforts parallel OpenAI. Both worked on difficult AI problems, producing interesting demos and open-source innovations. However, OpenAI remained independent, accepting investments from Microsoft and others to set up a commercial enterprise. DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 and continued to make cool demos and AI tools that were never released to the public. Google’s decision to steer AI away from public release put it at a disadvantage when OpenAI and Microsoft opted to turn loose powerful GPT language models.
Google’s Bard AI was supposed to be the answer to that, but the first demo flopped, and Google is now promising upgrades. Sources inside the company have since claimed they warned that Bard was not ready, but the threat posed by ChatGPT had leadership so spooked that they went ahead with the release. Google certainly isn’t used to trailing Microsoft, but perhaps the combined Google DeepMind will give Google’s AI the boost it needs.
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