DeepMind co-founder moves to Google as the AI lab positions itself for the future
1Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20997225/deepmind-co-founder-mustafa-suleyman-google-ai
Reported today in The Verge.
DeepMind co-founder moves to Google as the AI lab positions itself for the future
The personnel changes at Alphabet continue, this time with Mustafa Suleyman - one of the three co-founders of the company's influential AI lab DeepMind - moving to Google.
Suleyman announced the news on Twitter, saying that after a "wonderful decade" at DeepMind, he would be joining Google to work with the company's head of AI Jeff Dean and its chief legal officer Kent Walker. The exact details of Suleyman's new role are unclear.
The move is notable, though, as it was reported earlier this year that Suleyman had been placed on leave from DeepMind. (DeepMind disputed these reports, saying it was a mutual decision intended to give Suleyman "time out ... after 10 hectic years.") Some speculated that Suleyman's move was the fallout of reported tensions between DeepMind and Google, as the former struggled to commercialize its technology.
Although DeepMind has achieved a number of research milestones in the AI world, most notably the success of its AlphaGo program in 2016, the lab has also recorded significant financial losses. In 2018, it doubled its revenues to £102.8 million ($135 million), but its expenditures also rose to £470.2 million ($618 million) and it recorded a total debt of more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion).
Suleyman, who founded DeepMind in 2010 along with Demis Hassabis (now CEO) and Shane Legg (now chief scientist), had spearheaded the company's health team, which offered the lab one avenue to monetize its research. DeepMind's engineers designed a number of health algorithms that broke new ground, and its team built an assistant app for nurses and doctors that promised to save time and money. But the venture was also criticized strongly for its