Google founder Larry Page persuaded Demis Hassabis to sell his artificial intelligence company DeepMind. The London-based start-up will be shielded from the pressure to make money in order to focus on his one goal of creating computer software that rivals or exceeds human intelligence.
Hassabis has fought to keep Page’s promises since the £400m deal in 2014, but has gone further, according to three people familiar with the effort. DeepMind sought independent legal status similar to a non-profit, with an independent governing board overseeing the powerful technology it was trying to build.
But last week, when Page’s successor and chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, announced that he would merge DeepMind with Google Brain, the California-based tech giant’s AI lab. , such a move came to an end.
The move means Hassabis will cede deepmind’s cherished independence in exchange for greater power and influence over the future of AI. Pichai said he would lead the newly formed Google DeepMind division, which could also develop “competent and reliable” “generic AI systems” and integrate them into new products and services. have a clear mission.
Google’s restructuring was sparked by the rise of OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed group that launched ChatGPT last November.
With more than 100 million people using ChatGPT as of January, the sudden popularity of ChatGPT has dashed Google’s belief that it had a strong lead in the race to build and commercialize AI.
Microsoft has since announced that it will incorporate tools built with OpenAI across its productivity software. Well-financed rivals from Meta to Alibaba have announced big investments in AI products. Several well-resourced startups, including Tesla and Twitter chief Elon Musk’s early efforts, plan to offer even more competition.
Google also faces an existential dilemma. Alphabet’s search business, which accounts for much of Alphabet’s annual revenue of $283 billion in 2022, appears to be under direct threat. A large language model like ChatGPT can respond to queries with a comprehensive written answer instead of a series of links. These tools have the potential to provide millions of users with a route to bypassing online advertising.
In response to the threat, Google has reorganized itself and Hassabis has been put more clearly in charge of the company’s counterattack, according to people familiar with the matter.
To accelerate the search giant’s efforts, Hassabis said his new team will “collaborate and execute faster, stronger, and streamline how decisions are made to focus on achieving maximum impact.” It needs to be transformed,” he said.
To take on OpenAI, the newly formed Google DeepMind unit will need to put aside years of rivalry, according to several former Google and DeepMind employees and their collaborators.
Google Brain was also staffed with elite AI researchers, but the two teams had different cultures. According to his four former employees at both organizations, his London-based DeepMind is considered the company’s crown jewel and is largely closed off from the rest of the group, adopting a top-down approach. was hiring.
As Google’s data centers began consuming more computing power than ever before, it became harder to do so, but I often worked on projects in stealth. Its mission to “solve” the intellect was sacred. Employee success was measured by publication in leading scientific journals such as Nature. Three of his officials close to DeepMind said its leader is focused on “Nobel-level problems,” problems that, if solved, deserve a Nobel Prize.
California-based Blaine, on the other hand, was more open and less structured. According to multiple former employees, it has contributed significantly to Google’s bottom line over the years. Brain’s output is integrated into search, advertising, translation, and other parts of Google’s business.
Despite these successes, employees say they began to feel aimless. “I felt the structure of the organization [at Brain] It really didn’t scale from the beginning,” said the former Google employee.
Brain’s leader, Jeff Dean, is a long-time and highly respected AI scientist at the company, and has worked to focus and scale ideas, such as addressing personnel issues and canceling failed projects. The person said he was reluctant to make the necessary demands.
“If OpenAI sums up why OpenAI has so few resources and people compared to Google, it’s because they provided a clear mission. The brain got lost,” they added.
Pichai said last week’s reforms will allow Dean to focus on research and Hassabis will be in charge of an expanded group of scientists.
The change will likely “ruffle a lot of feathers” and cause staff turnover, according to people familiar with the merger, but it’s the best way for Google to run a “tighter ship” and catch up with its competitors. It might be your chance.
Two AI teams are already responsible for major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. DeepMind’s contributions include AlphaFold, software that can predict the shape of almost any known protein. Brain includes Transformers, the AI technology that underpins a new wave of generative AI products, including ChatGPT and Google’s own chatbot Bard.
Over the past two years, Hassabis has come to embrace the need for greater collaboration with Google, according to people close to the company.
The amount of computational power and investment required to build so-called large-scale language models capable of generating sophisticated and valid texts is growing rapidly. Recruiting AI talent is becoming more and more expensive. Microsoft announced earlier this year that it will invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI over several years to meet these challenges.
Hassabi’s promotion also means that the center of Google’s AI operations will move to London. This is a move with deep meaning.
“How much influence DeepMind holds . [Google] Dan Hendrycks, Research Director, Center for AI Safety, said: He argued that DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg has focused on AI safety and risk for his decade-plus, while Google Brain has never had a dedicated safety or coordination team. pointed out. Google said it has hundreds of people working on responsible AI across the company.
Those close to the new division said they believed the merger would be beneficial to AI research as a whole. ‘ will include the construction of These are similar to GPT-4, which powers part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, and his LamDA, Google’s model for powering the Bard chatbot.
However, it is not yet clear how the restructuring will lead to a more ambitious commercial offering, the people said. After all, DeepMind never actively advocated the need to make money from its work. Those close to Hassabis say he understands it’s time for a change.
“Demis is very practical and very competitive,” said the former DeepMind employee. “He’s ideological in that… vision, but he wants to be at the forefront of it. He’s not anti-commercial. This is the best way for him to work. way, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed.”
