Alphabet reshuffles AI leadership; appoints Demis Hassabis as Chief Scientist

Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced a significant overhaul of its artificial intelligence leadership on Wednesday. Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, will now serve as Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet. This restructuring also sees Koray Kavukcuoglu promoted to Senior Vice President of Google DeepMind. Veteran engineer Jeff Dean is departing the company as part of these changes. Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared the news on his official X account, highlighting the strong demand for Gemini models among developers and businesses, and noting the Gemini app has surpassed 950 million monthly users. Pichai praised Kavukcuoglu, who has spent 13 years at Google DeepMind, for building the company's deep learning team and driving breakthroughs like WaveNet and DQN. "Koray has been at GDM for 13 years and is a world-renowned expert in the field, starting our deep learning team and driving breakthroughs like WaveNet & DQN. GDM is in great hands!," Pichai posted. Hassabis, a leading figure in AI, stated that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has reached a pivotal stage and is "close at hand." He explained that stepping away from day-to-day operational responsibilities at Google DeepMind will allow him to focus on the broader direction of AGI and ensure its development benefits humanity. "I've decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at GDM, so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come to the best of my ability," Hassabis said. He expressed confidence in Kavukcuoglu's leadership, noting their long working relationship since DeepMind's early days.

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Demis Hassabis is stepping up to become Chair of Google DeepMind & Chief Scientist of Alphabet, in addition to leading Isomorphic Labs. He'll be able to dedicate his time and focus on shaping the future of AGI and scientific discovery. It's work that is vitally important to Alphabet and humanity, and I can't imagine a better person than Demis to do it. He'll stay closely connected to Koray and the GDM teams.