Sir Demis Hassabis, the Nobel prize-winning head of Google DeepMind, has announced he is relinquishing his day-to-day duties as chief executive of Google's AI unit. This week, Hassabis became chair of DeepMind and took on the role of chief scientist at its parent company, Alphabet.
Hassabis co-founded DeepMind and sold it to Google in 2014. He was jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on AlphaFold, a programme that predicts the 3D structure of proteins.
DeepMind will now be led by Koray Kavukcuoglu, a long-standing colleague of Hassabis, who will serve as senior vice-president. A former Google executive suggested this leadership change indicates DeepMind is being brought more closely into the orbit of its US-based parent company.
The move comes amid internal disquiet at DeepMind over the company's work with the Pentagon, with some employees expressing concern about how AI technology might be used. Google has stated its commitment that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.