Google’s two major artificial intelligence (AI) research labs, Google Brain and DeepMind, have been merged into one organization named Google DeepMind, led by Demis Hassabis, founder and CEO of DeepMind. The move is significant because some of the world’s best AI scientists work at the two companies. Google Brain is responsible for most AI applications in Google’s products and services, from Gmail’s screening engine to the translator or browser. It also created transformer neural networks, a deep learning model that has been instrumental in natural language processing and computer vision development. Acquired by Google for $500 million in 2014, DeepMind focuses on basic research, such as AlphaStar, a simulator that defeated expert StarCraft II players, and AlphaFold, an AI that predicted the structure of all known proteins. According to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, combining all the talent into one team, supported by Google’s computational resources, will significantly accelerate their progress in AI.
Google’s executives have been a bit uncertain for months after OpenAI’s popular conversational robot ChatGPT stole the AI leadership position from the Palo Alto giant, which it had been holding for decades. Microsoft’s strong commitment to OpenAI, which has developed a version of ChatGPT for the Bing search engine, has forced Google to take measures not to fall behind. In February, the company introduced Bard, its own conversational chatbot, and yesterday, it made another significant announcement with the merger of its two major AI research labs into one organization.
Despite Google’s recent insistence on operating cautiously in the race for generative AI, citing the potential for harm, the decision to increase the bet on AI may have been sparked by Samsung. The South Korean tech giant, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, is reportedly considering replacing Google with Bing as the default search engine for its devices, which could mean a loss of around $3 billion in annual revenue for Google. Therefore, Google has accelerated another project called Magi, a different search engine from Bard that will provide a more personalized user experience than Google’s traditional search engine and learn from previous searches. It will be interacted with through conversations, like Bing, and “try to anticipate users’ needs,” according to The New York Times.