Google Overhauls AI Leadership as Hassabis Steps Aside, Dean Leaves

Google is reorganizing its AI command structure with Demis Hassabis stepping away from day-to-day leadership of Google DeepMind to become Alphabet's chief scientist and DeepMind chair while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control, the company announced. Jeff Dean and several other senior engineers are also leaving to launch Discovery Loop. Kavukcuoglu will lead the unit as a senior vice president and continue serving as Alphabet's chief AI architect, Reuters reported. He will report to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and assume the operational responsibilities previously handled by Hassabis. Hassabis will focus on long-term AI research, strategy, and the potential development of artificial general intelligence. He said he wanted more time to work on the "big picture" rather than the management duties attached to running DeepMind. Hassabis will also remain CEO of Isomorphic Labs, the DeepMind spinout focused on AI-assisted drug discovery, according to The Guardian. Dean is leaving Google with Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le to establish Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation focused on machine learning, science, and engineering. Google will invest in Discovery Loop and provide cloud computing capacity through a partnership with the new company, Reuters reported. Alphabet shares closed 4% lower after the leadership changes were announced.