Google Shakes Up AI Leadership Amid Rivalry Concerns

Google's parent company Alphabet has undergone a significant leadership overhaul in its AI division. Demis Hassabis, the chief of Google DeepMind, will be leaving his main managerial role and taking on the title of Chief Scientist at Alphabet. He will also become chairman of Google DeepMind, but with few direct reports.

Hassabis cited the proximity of artificial general intelligence (AGI) as the reason for his role change. AGI is an advanced state of AI where computers are essentially as smart as humans. Hassabis has been a key figure in Google's AI efforts and co-founded DeepMind in 2010 before selling it to Google for around $650 million in 2014.

Koray Kavukcuoglu, the unit's chief technology officer, will take on day-to-day responsibilities as senior vice president of the business unit. He will also continue his role as Alphabet's Chief AI Architect. The leadership change comes at a critical time for Google DeepMind, with its flagship Gemini model still unreleased despite a planned June launch.

Several top engineers, including Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, have left the company to start a new venture called Discovery Loop. This startup will focus on research breakthroughs in machine learning, science, and engineering. Alphabet did not provide any details on what prompted the moves or their timing.