00:00For more than a decade, London has had a seat at the big table in AI thanks to DeepMind,
00:05Google's prized research lab. Not anymore. Demis Hassabis, the DeepMind co-founder and
00:10Nobel laureate scientist, announced he was stepping down as head of Google's AI division.
00:14He's becoming DeepMind Chair and Chief Scientist for parent company Alphabet.
00:19His transition formalizes a gravitational shift that's already been underway at the company,
00:24where Demis Hassabis has given over control of Gemini and other Google AI projects to
00:29key deputies. He's been stepping into more of an AI statesman role, sounding off on major regulatory
00:35issues and policy, and talking a lot about science and his work in Isomorphic Labs, which is an
00:41Alphabet unit based here in London focused on AI drug discovery. It's a kind of long-term scientific
00:47project that Demis Hassabis and DeepMind have cared about historically, but Google and Alphabet has
00:53shifted a lot more resources into winning the AI model race. A lot of the UK's success in tech,
00:59and AI over the past decade is because Demis Hassabis fought to keep DeepMind here and to keep the
01:05resources and the engineering talent and money flowing to London. That shift at Google, now moving the
01:11headquarters and attention of its AI efforts to California, will surely have implications for the UK.
01:16Okay.
Comments