In 2016, DeepMind, a small AI company Google acquired two years earlier, stunned the tech world when it beat the world champion of Go, a board game similar to chess that computers found hard to master.“We’ve been an AI-first company since 2016 because we see AI as the most significant way to deliver on our mission,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, said Thursday in a blog post as he unveiled the tech giant’s response to the new AI frenzy sparked by ChatGPT.
Elon Musk, who had been one of the founders of OpenAI, also said he is planning to join the fray by launching a new AI initiative he called “TruthGPT.” DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, who has been named CEO of Google DeepMind, recalled how when he and co-founder Shane Legg launched the startup in 2010, “many people thought general AI was a farfetched science fiction technology that was decades away from being a reality.”
'I would have done the same thing': NBA stars defend Draymond's stomp Are you ready for multiple days of #Stompgate discourse? “In the world of large scale AI systems, massive sets of data is the plutonium that powers the reactor,” Rosenberg said.The creation of Google DeepMind is “clearly a response to Microsoft and the moves it has been making with OpenAI,” said entrepreneur Tiago Amaral, founder of Inevitable Future Institute.
Google is known for a heavy emphasis on research. Rosenberg cited DeepMind which “has been such a unique force in pioneering large scale deep learning systems,” referring to the advanced field of AI, but which has not played a leading and high profile role in developing new products.