Google is undergoing a major leadership overhaul within its AI division, with Demis Hassabis stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to assume the role of Chair of DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. This move, announced by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, aims to allow Hassabis to focus on broader strategic goals for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and advise on Google's overall AI direction. Hassabis will also continue to lead Isomorphic Labs, Google's AI drug discovery spin-off.
Taking over many of Hassabis's operational responsibilities at Google DeepMind is Koray Kavukcuoglu, the former Chief Technology Officer of DeepMind and Alphabet's Chief AI Architect. Kavukcuoglu will become the Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind, reporting directly to Sundar Pichai. His purview will include Gemini model development, frontier AI research, and the Gemini app and developer teams. This change comes amidst concerns about Google's progress in the AI race, particularly with its flagship Gemini model.
Further compounding the shake-up, several key Google AI leaders, including veteran engineer Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le, are departing the company. Dean and Ghemawat are launching a new independent public benefit corporation called Discovery Loop, focused on accelerating discoveries in machine learning, science, and engineering. Google will be an investor and cloud provider for this new venture. The news of these leadership changes led to Alphabet's shares falling 4 percent.
