Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the two entities within the companies have merged into a new business unit dedicated to developing the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs and products.
The new division, Google DeepMind, is the result of the merger of Google Research's Brain team and DeepMind, the London-based artificial intelligence company Google acquired in 2014. The newly formed business unit aims to accelerate the way the company progresses in developing AI in a safe and responsible manner. Pichai's goal of bringing together Google's AI talent into one dedicated team is to "significantly accelerate our progress in AI." Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google Research and Google DeepMind, will report directly to Pichai, tasked with building a robust set of multimodal AI models.
With Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others claiming that artificial intelligence has the potential to destroy civilization, Pichai clarified the intentions behind the creation of the unit: "To ensure the bold and responsible development of general artificial intelligence, we are creating a division that w ill help we build more capable systems more safely and responsibly."
While Pichai said the division's eventual developments will be used to enhance Google products, specifics are still unknown at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, a recent survey of 11,004 US citizens revealed that people are very concerned that artificial intelligence will take over the workplace. Fifty-six percent of respondents believe AI will have a significant impact on the US economy, while only 13 percent believe that "AI will help American workers more than it will harm them."
