Google has started putting more effort into the R&D of AI. The company has combined its AI Research Division, Google Brain, and DeepMind AI research teams into one unified AI team called Google DeepMind. The company has started investing heavily in AI research. Recently, some of their upcoming projects, like MAGI, have surfaced, which will likely be integrated into Google Search and other products to compete against Microsoft Bing. Google DeepMind will be led by Demis Hassabis (co-founder and CEO of DeepMind), alongside Google Brain lead Jeff Dean as Chief Scientist of Google Mind at Google DeepMind HQ in London and offices in Mountain View, California, and Edmonton, Alberta.
With respected AI researchers and leaders, Google aims to offer various tasks such as natural language processing, computer vision, and speech recognition. Google researchers have also committed to investing essential resources to contribute to multiple fields like computer science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Google already works in privacy and security, quantum computing, and health, where AI can significantly impact.
Google Brain was founded in 2018, and they have developed deep learning algorithms like convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks. While DeepMind was founded in 2010 and acquired by Google in January 2014 for $500 million, it also developed programs like AlphaGo and AlphaFold, which are known to have defeated a human champion of the game in 2016 with a significant advance in the field of protein folding by which it can beat a human professional Go player and predict the structure of complex proteins. Google also acquired Boston Dynamics, a robotics firm, in December 2013.
Google wants to use artificial intelligence and robotics to improve its products and services.
Before Google acquired DeepMind, it struggled to break even financially because of the expense of training a massive AI model and its significant headcount, which reportedly cost $1.5 million in its debut in 2019; in 2020, the company reported a profit of $60 million. Its revenue now depends on licensing its technology to Alphabet groups like Waymo.
The company is also addressing and identifying the potential risks associated with AI. Google is committed to helping ensure that AI is developed to benefit society and not harm it. Google plans to create powerful AI tools to understand humans and process information from multiple sources, like text, images, and audio. Google is also ensuring that its AI research is aligned with its strategic goals by creating a new Scientific Board to oversee research projects and the direction of the unit.
Artificial intelligence can potentially revolutionize the industry and solve the world’s most pressing problems. With the combination of Google Brain and DeepMind Team, research and development will increase collaboration and the sharing of ideas between the two teams, resulting in faster progress in AI research and development and could help Google hold a stronger position in the global AI race.
Google DeepMind is the next phase of the AI journey and progress.
It will offer faster and more powerful AI tools to improve Google’s products and services, such as Google Maps, Gmail, Search, and other products, which will become more powerful and efficient for users. It will be interesting to see what Google DeepMind can achieve in the coming months. However, Google Research and Google Brain will remain the same internally because they are responsible for a wide range of research areas, not just AI. Keeping them separate will ensure the leader in various fields.
Broader and encompassing AI capabilities in one product, Google’s consolidation of its AI division is committed to remaining at the forefront of AI. In the past, Google’s AI Division developed new machine learning algorithms and tools. Google Brain was responsible for TensorFlow and the Open Source Machine Learning Framework used in the most popular tools. Furthermore, Google Translate enhancements include the development of natural language processing and computer vision technologies to improve other Google products simultaneously.
However, Google has released the AI ChatBot Bard to compete against Microsoft’s Bing Chat, which could be better. To improve its AI ChatBot, the company has put more than 160 engineers in place to work on its outsized resources at MAGI. Google has been an AI-first company since 2016 and has used AI to improve its core products like Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail, as well as help businesses grow with AI via Google Cloud. The company also focuses on other things, like health and climate change.
DeepMind Health is another initiative from Google’s DeepMind AI Division that uses AI to improve health. The company has partnered with several healthcare organizations, including the National Health Service and the Royal Free Hospital London. They are also working on a Hark app to help doctors and nurses with clinical tasks like scheduling appointments and ordering tests. It’s in the early stages, but it has the potential to impact healthcare by improving the diagnosis and management of diseases, which could improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.