Google Reshuffles Its AI Leadership: Hassabis Turns to Science and Medicine

Google has announced a major shake-up at the top of its artificial-intelligence divisions. CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed the changes on Wednesday.

Hassabis Changes Roles

Demis Hassabis, who headed Google DeepMind, is stepping down as its leader to become chairman of DeepMind, as well as chief scientist of Alphabet. At the same time, he will continue to lead Isomorphic Labs — the Alphabet division that uses AI to develop drugs.

In a message to staff, Hassabis stressed that he has always regarded improving human health as the most important application of artificial intelligence. In his words, “the time has come for AI to prove its unconditional value to the world,” and the best way to do so is to finally help defeat diseases such as cancer. Hassabis pledged to keep working closely with Pichai on strategic matters and the global challenges tied to building artificial general intelligence (AGI), and to advise DeepMind's new leaders.

His place is being taken by Koray Kavukcuoglu, previously DeepMind's chief technology officer. He is becoming senior vice president of Google for the DeepMind area, will report directly to Pichai, and will retain his role as the company's chief AI architect.

Jeff Dean Leaves to Build His Own Startup

The second notable change is the departure of company veteran Jeff Dean, chief scientist of Google DeepMind and Google's 30^th employee. Leaving alongside him is Google Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat. Together the two are founding the AI company Discovery Loop — a public benefit corporation. Google itself will be one of its first investors.

On the Discovery Loop website, the mission is described plainly: the team intends to build AI solutions capable of automatically solving important problems in machine learning, science, and engineering. By accelerating the pace of scientific and engineering discovery, the founders hope to bring the fruits of technology to people around the world faster and, ultimately, to build AI systems that will become a “profoundly positive, empowering force for humanity.”

As a result, several key figures who stood at the origins of Google's current AI work are shifting their focus toward fundamental science and medicine — while remaining within Alphabet's orbit.

Source: The Verge