Alphabet Split the Pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) From the Job of Shipping It
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Alphabet split the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) from the job of shipping it.
Demis Hassabis stepped down as CEO of Google DeepMind. He becomes the unit's Chairman and Alphabet's Chief Scientist, the seat Jeff Dean is vacating, and continues to run Isomorphic Labs. Koray Kavukcuoglu, a 13-year DeepMind veteran and its chief technology officer, takes over operations as Senior VP, reporting to Sundar Pichai.
The same announcement confirmed Dean's exit. After 27 years, Alphabet's Chief Scientist is leaving to co-found Discovery Loop, an independent public benefit corporation building AI for science, with Oriol Vinyals, Sanjay Ghemawat, and Quoc Le. Alphabet co-led the funding and will supply the cloud compute. It is financing the departure of four of its most senior researchers and keeping an equity and commercial stake in what they build.
On paper Kavukcuoglu is a credible operator with deep roots in the lab. The open question is authority. He inherits a delayed flagship model in Gemini 3.5 Pro and a predecessor who stays on as Chairman and Chief Scientist. Reporting to Pichai removes a layer. Whether Hassabis's continued presence gives Kavukcuoglu real command of the roadmap, or only proximity to the person who set it, is unresolved.
Hassabis is stepping back from operations at the very moment he says AGI is closest. Is that conviction from a scientist who sees what is coming, or is he loosening his grip at the worst possible time?
🔗 Source: Google's AI Reshuffle: Chief Scientist Jeff Dean Exits and Demis Hassabis Steps Down as DeepMind CEO
