Google merges its two artificial intelligence divisions Brain and DeepMind

News on April 21, Google announced on Thursday local time that it would merge its two main artificial intelligence research departments, Brain and DeepMind, and the new department would be called Google DeepMind.

DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis will lead the unit. Google acquired DeepMind in 2014 for about $500 million.

Jeff Dean, head of Google Research (Brain team), will serve as the chief scientist of the new setting. Dean will lead the company's "most critical and strategic AI-related technology projects," including a series of new, powerful AI projects.

Analysis said that this is a major business reorganization. Artificial intelligence is currently rapidly reshaping the business, and technology companies are vying for a leading position.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an open letter: "Bringing all this talent into a dedicated team, supported by Google's computing resources, will significantly accelerate Our progress in artificial intelligence."

Tech companies, including Google and OpenAI, have been racing to build larger artificial intelligence algorithms, known as large language models (LLMs). These programs have shown great promise in performing a variety of tasks, such as summarizing complex documents and conducting human conversation-like interactions.

Google has pioneered many technologies that have paved the way for the recent explosion of this type of model. But the company has largely refrained from publicly releasing its most powerful image and text generation programs, citing the need to test the tools for accuracy and signs of bias.

Pichai said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this month that he expected the Brain and DeepMind teams to work together more frequently, citing previous experience working together.

Pichai said: "I expect there will be more and closer cooperation between the two teams, because some jobs require greater computing power, so it makes sense to work together on a certain scale. I believe , bringing the best talents together will help us achieve better breakthroughs."

Google is currently committed to improving efficiency and accelerating the development of artificial intelligence technology. Parent company Alphabet announced the largest layoffs in the company's history in January and said it would limit executive bonuses amid economic uncertainty.

Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Google and Alphabet, told employees last month that they plan to further reduce costs such as computing infrastructure usage and cafeteria supplies this year.

OpenAI launched the latest version of its artificial intelligence model, GPT-4, last month, claiming it is more powerful and more predictable than previous versions. At the same time, Google also opened up one of its largest artificial intelligence algorithms, the Path Language Model (PaLM), to developers.

Because building and running large artificial intelligence algorithms requires massive computing resources, most of the work is concentrated in large technology companies. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has invested at least $13 billion in OpenAI, most of which has been used to develop programs such as GPT-4.

Alphabet has long viewed Brain and DeepMind as operating as separate teams, despite significant overlap in several areas of artificial intelligence research. This setup can sometimes create tensions between leaders as teams compete for resources, etc.

Christopher Manning, director of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said that given that Brain and DeepMind pursue two very different corporate cultures, the merger will mark the way Google artificial intelligence researchers work together. "dramatic transformation".

"Strategically, the merging of the two teams seemed like a smart move," Manning said. "But tactically, it will be difficult to deal with organizational and cultural changes."

According to the Wall Street Journal, DeepMind told employees as early as 2021 that Google had canceled the grant to the team Negotiate more autonomy. Alphabet said in February that it would begin including DeepMind operations as part of its corporate costs in its financial reports, instead of classifying it as "other bets."

According to company filings, DeepMind’s research and development work for Alphabet generated $1.7 billion in revenue in 2021.

DeepMind has confirmed that the new artificial intelligence team will be affiliated with Google and not "other bets", and there are no layoffs planned in this reorganization.

Hassabis said on Twitter on Thursday: "By working with all our great colleagues at Google, we have the opportunity to build general artificial intelligence (AGI) that can ultimately benefit humanity." This technology will be used in the future It is expected to be able to perform tasks like humans.

Since the debut of ChatGPT in November, Google has translated technological advances in artificial intelligence research into consumer products. Last month, Google launched a chatbot called Bard and plans to make it available as an early trial as a standalone service.

Pichai said in an interview that Google also plans to add more conversational artificial intelligence features to its core search engine. In February, Microsoft introduced the technology behind ChatGPT to its search engine Bing, creating chatbots that can hold longer conversations with users.

Pichai said: "Can people ask questions to Google and interact with LLM in a search environment? Absolutely." (Xiao Xiao)

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