Alphabet's Google Combines AI Research Units Brain and DeepMind

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By Miles Kruppa

$Alphabet-C(GOOG.US)$ merged its two main artificial-intelligence research units, a major reshuffling as tech companies jockey for leadership in an area quickly reshaping business.

Google said the new unit, Google DeepMind, would combine the existing Google Brain and DeepMind research groups into one team. The unit will be led by Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, which Google purchased for about $500 million in 2014.

Jeff Dean, the previous head of Google Research overseeing the Google Brain team, will move to a new role as Chief Scientist. Google said he would lead the company's "most critical and strategic technical projects related to AI," including a new series of powerful AI programs.

"Combining all this talent into one focused team, backed by the computational resources of Google, will significantly accelerate our progress in AI," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Thursday in a blog post.

Tech companies including Google and $Microsoft(MSFT.US)$-backed OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, have been racing to build increasingly large AI algorithms known as large language models. Those programs have shown promise performing a range of tasks, such as summarizing complex documents and conducting humanlike conversations.

Google pioneered some of the technology that paved the way for recent developments in such models, but largely held back from wide public release of its most powerful image- and text-generation programs, citing the need to test the tools for accuracy and signs of bias.

"I expect a lot more, stronger collaboration because some of these efforts will be more compute-intensive, so it'll make sense to do it at a certain scale together. Being able to bring the best together, I think, will help us lead to better breakthroughs." Mr. Pichai said in the interview.

Last month, OpenAI introduced the newest version of its AI technology, GPT-4, claiming it was more powerful and predictable than previous iterations. Google has also opened limited access for developers to one of its largest AI algorithms, the Pathways Language Model, or PaLM.

Building and running large AI algorithms requires significant computational resources, a setup that has concentrated most of the work in big tech companies. Microsoft has invested at least $13 billion in OpenAI, the Journal reported, much of which has gone toward building programs like GPT-4.

Alphabet had long maintained Google Brain and DeepMind as separate groups, in spite of their significant overlap in several areas of AI research. That setup sometimes created tensions between their leaders.

In 2021, DeepMind told staff that Google had called off talks about giving the group more autonomy from its parent company, the Journal reported. Alphabet said in February it would begin reporting DeepMind as part of its corporate costs, rather than a separate group of companies called "Other Bets."

DeepMind brought in $1.7 billion (1.4 billion British pounds) of revenue from research and development work performed for Alphabet in 2021, according to corporate filings in the U.K., where the team is based.

The new AI group will be housed under Google, rather than Other Bets, the company said. No layoffs were planned as part of the reorganization.

The debut of ChatGPT in November has spurred Google, long a leader in AI research, to turn those advancements into consumer products. Last month, Google released a chatbot named Bard, calling it an "early experiment" it planned to offer as a stand-alone service.

Google also plans to build more conversational AI features into its core search engine, Mr. Pichai said in an interview with the Journal this month. In February, Microsoft infused its search engine Bing with the technology behind ChatGPT, creating a version that could hold extended conversations with users.

"Will people be able to ask questions to Google and engage with LLMs in the context of search? Absolutely," Mr. Pichai said.