Hassabis Steps Back from Google DeepMind Amid Leadership Shake-up
Google's AI leadership has been shaken up with Demis Hassabis stepping back from day-to-day operations at Google DeepMind. As of August 5, Alphabet restructured its entire AI leadership hierarchy, moving Hassabis to a newly created dual role as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet.
Hassabis will now focus on 'high-level frameworks' surrounding artificial general intelligence and the societal implications of advanced AI, while continuing to lead his AI-driven drug discovery venture Isomorphic Labs. He'll also advise on DeepMind models and research.
Operating reins at Google DeepMind have been taken over by Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly the company's Chief Technology Officer, who has been elevated to Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind. Kavukcuoglu will report directly to Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO.
The shakeup is part of a broader change in AI leadership at Google, with multiple prominent researchers leaving the company to start a new AI startup, including Jeff Dean and three other key researchers: Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le, and Sanjay Ghemawat.