- Google faces intense competition from Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, Elon Musk’s upcoming TruthGPT, and several small players.Â
- The tech giant has been working on upgrading its Bard AI project to compete in the AI space, where the Microsoft-OpenAI collaboration holds a clear lead.
- Google’s Brain and Alphabet’s DeepMind have already collaborated on a project named ‘Gemini’ to create a competitor to GPT-4.
In a move driving its artificial intelligence ambitions, Google has announced the consolidation of its biggest research units, including Google Research’s Brain and Alphabet’s DeepMind.
To facilitate the restructuring, Jeff Dean, who has been heading the company’s AI and research initiatives, will move out of his management role to become Google’s chief scientist instead, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. The new entity, Google DeepMind, will develop new AI systems with improved capabilities.
London-based DeepMind, acquired by Alphabet in 2014, is known for its AlphaFold and AlphaGo offerings for biotech and entertainment applications, respectively. The entity commonly develops AI concepts that may not directly affect Google’s products. However, Google Research focused on large language models, which has been essential in creating Google’s Bard.
With tighter integration, the merger brings all research initiatives under the Alphabet umbrella. While the ideologies of both entities are different, the combined entity is expected to build many robust, multimodal models for artificial intelligence tools to help Google stay ahead of Microsoft and OpenAI.Â
Currently, most major tech players have initiated projects to capitalize on the AI chatbot trend. Aside from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, Meta has also developed the Galactica language model, while Anthropic, You.com, and Baidu have developed the Claude, YouChat, and Ernie chatbots, respectively. Meanwhile, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced the development of his own chatbot TruthGPT. With the AI race heating up, the Google merger will be critical to the company’s capability to stay competitive in the long run.
See More: Elon Musk Challenges Microsoft With TruthGPT and a Twitter Lawsuit
Google Employees Concerned About Ethical Lapses in AI Race
While Google has been investing significant resources in its AI projects, company employees have raised concerns that Google has been ethically lax in launching Bard in a bid to remain competitive. Despite the company’s efforts to position itself as a responsible caretaker of AI development, it struggles to maintain its reputation, especially after firing AI ethics researchers Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru in early 2021.
Other academics have backed out of Google initiatives, turning down grants and resigning from the company. Google has siloed teams that work on AI features, hurting the overall transparency of the company’s operations.Â
Employees believe that while safety checks have been carried out on new generative AI technologies, Google is prioritizing releasing new products above all, challenging team members to voice their concerns regarding the ethics of using such products, especially in terms of child-friendly content, identity data, and biometrics, among others.
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