DeepMind melds with Google’s Brain Team to accelerate AI growth

Despite recent reports of Google hastily pushing AI developments in an attempt to remain competitive in the AI space, the tech giant announced another significant advancement in its AI projects on Friday. 

Google is merging its Brain Team, a Google Research team that focuses on machine learning and AI, with DeepMind, a leading AI research company acquired by Alphabet in 2014, to create a new group called Google DeepMind. 

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The group will be backed by Google's computational forces and will focus on further accelerating Google's development of AI products, services, and most importantly their safety. 

“The pace of progress is now faster than ever before,” says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “To ensure the bold and responsible development of general AI, we're creating a unit that will help us build more capable systems more safely and responsibly.”

The CEO of Deepmind, Demis Hassabis, will lead the development of Google's “most capable” and “responsible” AI systems, according to the release. 

Jeff Dean, a co-founder of the Brain team and former SVP of Google Research and Health, will shift into the role of Google's Chief Scientist to both Google Research and Google Deepmind. 

Google Research will continue to further research on important topics in computer science such as algorithms and theory, privacy and security, health, climate and sustainability, and responsible AI, according to the post. 

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A major theme of the release was the concept of responsible and safe AI, likely following all the backlash Google has received since launching Bard. 

On Wednesday, both former and current employees shared with Bloomberg that Google's rush to release Bard caused the company to compromise AI ethics and safety. Perhaps the Google DeepMind group will be a step in the right direction towards addressing that issue.