Alphabet Shakes Up AI Leadership Amid Gemini Surge

Alphabet is restructuring its artificial-intelligence operation by moving a team responsible for studying AI risks and societal impacts out of Google DeepMind. The move follows a major leadership overhaul announced in August, where Demis Hassabis became chairman of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet.

Koray Kavukcuoglu took operational control as senior vice president of Google DeepMind while remaining Google's chief AI architect. The AI-responsibility team is being moved outside DeepMind, which some researchers are concerned could reduce the team's independence or make it harder to identify risks stemming from the newest systems.

Alphabet is also adding senior research talent with the addition of Barret Zoph as vice president of research at DeepMind. Zoph co-founded Thinking Machines Lab and was a former OpenAI research executive.