Google is stepping up its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts by merging its DeepMind and Google Brain teams. Called Google DeepMind, this new unit will “ build better, safer and more responsible systems “, announces Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.
DeepMind, the company behind the AlphaGo AI, was acquired by Alphabet in 2014, while Google Brain teams conduct research in the field of deep learning under the aegis of Google Research, which is dedicated to research in computer science and artificial intelligence.
Two cutting-edge units in AI research
” Their collective AI achievements over the past decade span AlphaGo, Transformers, word2vec, WaveNet, AlphaFold, sequence-to-sequence models, distillation, deep reinforcement learning, distributed systems, and frameworks. software such as TensorFlow and JAX for expressing, training, and deploying language models at scale writes Sundar Pichai.
Google DeepMind will be led by Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMing. Google Research vice president Jeff Dean becomes the new division’s chief scientist. “ By combining our talents and efforts, we will accelerate our progress towards a world in which AI helps solve the greatest challenges facing humanity, and I am incredibly excited to lead this unit and work with all of you in its construction “Enthuses Demis Hassabis.
Google wants to deploy AI in almost all of its products
This restructuring in Google’s ranks is not surprising, as the company largely wants to accelerate in the AI sector in order to compete with OpenAI and Microsoft. By introducing generative AI into its Bing search engine, the Redmond firm is competing very seriously with Google in its main sector of activity, which it has dominated unchallenged for two decades.
If Google launched Bard in response to ChatGPT, the conversational agent is not yet unanimous. Despite this small setback, the Mountain View firm remains a juggernaut in the field of AI. By combining the strengths of its research teams, it “ will continue its important work towards fundamental advances in computing in areas such as algorithms and theory, privacy and security, quantum computing, health, climate and sustainable development, as well as that lifelong education and training “, according to its CEO.
Moreover, Google would like to integrate generative AI into almost all of its products, a task that will require colossal efforts.
Sources: DeepMind, Google, The Verge
5