DeepMind founder ascends to singular AI role at Google

From ComputerWorld: Demis Hassabis, the driving force behind Google DeepMind, is ascending to the role of chief scientist at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, replacing Jeff Dean who is leaving to work at a start-up.

The role will enable Hassabis to “put his full attention on actively shaping the future of AGI,” or artificial general intelligence, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote on the company’s Inside Google blog.

Hassabis’ attention will still be divided, however: He will continue to lead research at Google spin-off Isomorphic Labs, which works on drug discovery, and although he will no longer be CEO of DeepMind, he will be its chair. Koray Kavukcuoglu will take over DeepMind, reporting directly to Pichai. He is currently its CTO.

Hassabis has been a strong promoter of AGI, defined by Google as the “hypothetical intelligence of a machine that possesses the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.”

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