Google parent company Alphabet on Wednesday announced a leadership overhaul of its AI division, with AI chief Demis Hassabis leaving his main managerial role and as several leaders of its Gemini model, including veteran engineer Jeff Dean, left the company to launch a startup called Discovery Loop. The shake-up comes during a pivotal juncture for Google DeepMind: the flagship version of its latest Gemini model remains unreleased despite a planned June launch, sparking investor and industry concerns that Google is falling behind its rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, each of which scooped up a star Google AI staffer this summer.Shares of Alphabet fell 4% after the news. Hassabis, a Nobel Prize recipient, will take the newly created title of Alphabet’s chief scientist and transition from being Google DeepMind CEO to being its chairman, he said in a memo to staff.Koray Kavukcuoglu, the unit’s chief technology officer, will assume day-to-day responsibilities of DeepMind in addition to his parallel role as Alphabet’s chief AI architect.
