Google consolidates teams for faster development of AI products
Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai announced changes to Google’s workplace team structure, saying the moves will help the company develop AI products and services faster and more eciently.
In a note to employees Pichai said the models, research and responsible AI teams would be consolidated under the company’s flagship AI division, Google DeepMind.
To accelerate work on Google’s AI models — Gemini and Gemma — employees working on the technology across Google Research and Google DeepMind will unite as one team, which will also consolidate the expensive computing power needed to train and build the systems under one arm of the company. Responsible AI teams across the business will also move under Google DeepMind.
A new unified Platform and
Devices team, meanwhile, will bring together eorts across hardware, software and AI teams at Google — including those working on products such as Android, Chrome, search and photos, Pichai said. The group will also include employees working on computational photography and ondevice AI features like Google’s recently launched “circle to search” AI tool it announced in partnership with Samsung Electronics Co.
The changes, Pichai wrote, “will help us work with greater focus and clarity toward our mission.” While Google has intensified its work on GenAI to catch up to the allied eorts of Microsoft and OpenAI, which many perceive as being more advanced, the company also has been shifting priorities and lowering costs. For the past few months, that has resulted in a series of cascading job reductions, creating a grim new reality of insecurity for employees. In January, the company cut hundreds of people working on its digital assistant, hardware and engineering teams.
AI EMPHASIS
At the same time, Google framed the reorganisation as necessary to more sharply focus on launching AI tools and services. Earlier this year, the company rolled out a new version of its powerful AI model, Gemini 1.5 Pro, which it said could handle a larger amount of text, video and even audio outputs compared with the competition.