Earlier today we announced some changes that will accelerate our progress in AI and help us develop more capable AI systems safely and responsibly. Below is a recap of what DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis shared with employees:
Hi Team
When we launched DeepMind back in 2010, many people thought general AI was a farfetched science fiction technology that was decades away from being a reality.
Now, we live in a time in which AI research and technology is advancing exponentially. In the coming years, AI – and ultimately AGI – has the potential to drive one of the greatest social, economic and scientific transformations in history.
That’s why today Sundar is announcing that DeepMind and the Brain team from Google Research will be joining forces as a single, focused unit called Google DeepMind. Combining our talents and efforts will accelerate our progress towards a world in which AI helps solve the biggest challenges facing humanity, and I’m incredibly excited to be leading this unit and working with all of you to build it. Together, in close collaboration with our fantastic colleagues across the Google Product Areas, we have a real opportunity to deliver AI research and products that dramatically improve the lives of billions of people, transform industries, advance science, and serve diverse communities.
By creating Google DeepMind, I believe we can get to that future faster. Building ever more capable and general AI, safely and responsibly, demands that we solve some of the hardest scientific and engineering challenges of our time. For that, we need to work with greater speed, stronger collaboration and execution, and to simplify the way we make decisions to focus on achieving the biggest impact.
Through Google DeepMind, we are bringing together our world-class talent in AI with the computing power, infrastructure and resources to create the next generation of AI breakthroughs and products across Google and Alphabet, and to do this in a bold and responsible way. The research advances from the phenomenal Brain and DeepMind teams laid much of the foundations of the current AI industry, from Deep Reinforcement Learning to Transformers, and the work we are going to be doing now as part of this new combined unit will create the next wave of world-changing breakthroughs.
Sundar, Jeff Dean, James Manyika, and I have built a fantastic partnership as we’ve worked to coordinate our efforts over recent months. I am looking forward to working closely with Eli Collins, who will be joining my leads team as VP of Product, and Zoubin Ghahramani who will be joining the research leadership team reporting to Koray Kavukcuoglu. We’re also creating a new Scientific Board for Google DeepMind to oversee research progress and direction of the unit, which will be led by Koray and will have representatives from across the orgs. Jeff, Koray, Zoubin, Shane and myself will be finalising the composition of this board together in the coming days.
I’m sure you will have lots of questions about what this new unit will look like for you, your teams, and all of us, and we will be working hard to provide clarity for everyone as rapidly as possible. Please read Sundar’s note, and tune in to the town hall meeting tomorrow.
I’m thrilled to be on this journey with you and look forward to seeing everyone soon.
Best
Demis