In April, Google made a dramatic move to face down the threat from Microsoft and OpenAI: it combined its artificial-intelligence-research team, Brain, with DeepMind.
For almost a decade, DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, functioned as an independent unit within Alphabet — something the company refers to as an "alpha bet." By fusing it with its central AI unit, Google sent an unambiguous message that it was pulling out all the stops to supercharge its work in AI.
The new coalition thrusts Demis Hassabis, a cofounder of DeepMind, into the driving seat as Google accelerates work to build Gemini, a next-generation language model that could far outperform OpenAI's ChatGPT. The unit is set to focus on turning its research into products while being more selective about the research it chooses to make public.
There's no guarantee that the new alliance will be a success. Employees from Brain and DeepMind may have to overcome past rivalries, and the new power dynamics remain hazy.
Insider obtained internal org charts that reveal the new power structure of Google DeepMind. Hassabis oversees about 2,450 full-time employees, most of whom are Google DeepMind employees. He also commands a handful of staff in Isomorphic Labs, a separate "other bet" exploring the use of AI in drug discovery.
Many of Hassabis' direct reports remain unchanged since Google fused DeepMind and Brain. Eli Collins, who oversees work on Google's chatbot, Bard, now also reports to Hassabis, according to the charts.
Zoubin Ghahramani, who has an organization of about 600 employees and previously reported to Jeff Dean, now reports to Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google's VP of Research and Technology.
Dean, who previously oversaw Google's AI unit, has moved from his management position into a new role as Chief Scientist and reports directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Dean is also working on Gemini and oversees just three direct reports, including Emanuel Taropa, a famed engineer working on Google's latest large language models Bard and PaLM 2, according to internal charts seen by Insider.
DeepMind previously said one of its goals was to reach artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical state where a machine can learn and think like a human. A group of employees is working on that effort as part of Google's Path to Artificial General Intelligence, or PAGI.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
