Google has consolidated its AI-focused subsidiaries into a single unit called Google DeepMind for the secure and responsible development of more powerful AI systems. This new group brings together two leading research groups in the AI field, Google Brain and DeepMind.
The merger comes as a response to the rapid developments in AI, mainly the impressive achievements of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is owned by Microsoft.
DeepMind is an AI research company founded in 2010 in the United Kingdom and acquired by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. in 2014, for for an estimated $500 million. DeepMind is best known for developing advanced AI systems that play complex games like Go, chess, and poker at a superhuman level.
DeepMind has ventured into various AI applications, including the development of Sparrow chatbot, which reportedly has certain capabilities that OpenAI’s ChatGPT does not possess. For instance, Sparrow chatbot is capable of using reinforcement learning to cite sources.
In his blog post, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai underlined the collective achievements in AI over the last decade of the Google Brain & DeepMind teams.
He highlighted their groundbreaking inventions such as “AlphaGo, Transformers, word2vec, WaveNet, AlphaFold, sequence to sequence models, distillation, deep reinforcement learning, and distributed systems and software frameworks like TensorFlow and JAX.” Their AlphaGo program famously defeated the world champion Go player Lee Sedol in 2016, marking a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence.
Google is planning to introduce new AI-based search capabilities in the US next month. However, Demis Hassabis (the CEO of Google DeepMind) emphasized the potential risks of powerful AI technology. He added that when dealing with highly powerful technologies, like AI, it is crucial to exercise caution as not everyone is aware of the risks involved.
Demis Hassabis will lead the development of AI systems, while Jeff Dean will be promoted as Chief Scientist at Google Research and Google DeepMind.
The potential outcome of this merger is still too early to predict as the details of how the two teams will work together are not yet clear, and the impact of the merger on the company’s overall AI efforts remains to be seen.
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Story source: Sundar Pichai “Google DeepMind: Bringing together two world-class AI teams”
