There is way to be glad about within the AI era that’s currently sweeping Silicon Valley and your complete corporate world DeepMindthe London, UK-based startup that has been repeatedly exploring advances in machine learning technology since its inception Founded in 2010and what was Acquired by Google in 2014and released such acclaimed software because the protein predictor AlphaFold.
Now certainly one of DeepMind's original co-founders, Mustafa Suleyman, has been let go from his last position – as co-founder and CEO of AI startup Inflection – along along with his Inflection co-founder Karén Simonyan and lots of others on the Inflection team to begin a brand new department at a certainly one of Google's primary competitors: Microsoft.
“I’m very happy to announce that Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan are joining Microsoft to create a brand new organization called Microsoft AI, focused on advancing Copilot and our other consumer AI products and research “, he wrote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an official blog post and email published today.
He continued: “Mustafa will change into EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI, joining the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and reporting to me. Karén joins this group as Chief Scientist, reporting to Mustafa. I actually have known Mustafa for several years and have greatly admired him because the founding father of DeepMind and Inflection, in addition to as a visionary, constructing products and constructing pioneering teams pursuing daring missions.”
For his part, Suleyman took to the social network X to jot down: “I’m pleased to announce that today I’m joining Microsoft as CEO of Microsoft AI. I’ll lead all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing and Edge. My friend and long-time collaborator Karén Simonyan will likely be chief scientist, and a number of other of our great teammates have decided to affix us.”
In the meantime, inflection announced it will move forward with a brand new CEOSean White, former head of research and development at browser company Mozilla, and that it’s bringing its AI model Inflection-2.5 to Microsoft Azure and other cloud platforms, although not immediately (no exact date was given).
As an inflection Blog post states: “We are very happy with what now we have achieved with Pi. There will likely be no immediate changes to the service and we’re committed to making sure users proceed to have access to great AI experiences in the long run.”
Controversial past and concerns about consolidation
While most parties celebrated the move, others on social media expressed a darker opinion, stating that Suleyman had made allegations of bullying behavior by employees at Google DeepMind up to now and that the move individually raised fears of AI consolidation at existing ones Technologies appear to be leading the best way, especially since Microsoft is already a significant supporter of OpenAI and recently partnered with Mistral.
Margaret Mitchellcurrently senior ethics scientist and researcher at AI code hosting company Hugging Face and the former co-lead of Google's AI ethics team fired by the search giant for violating its code of conduct, went to
In January 2021, first reported that Suleyman had been stripped of most of his leadership roles at Google DeepMind following “complaints that he bullied employees” and an independent investigation by an out of doors law firm. Google issued a press release on the time saying Suleyman had “undertaken skilled development training to deal with problem areas” and was not leading large teams and had been moved to the position of vp of AI policy, where he was said to be helpful made contributions.
Suleyman himself told the newspaper that he “pushes people too hard and my leadership style was not constructive at times.” I sincerely apologize to those affected.” Nevertheless, Google employees are said to have disrupted his role there.
More reports of Suleyman's alleged bullying later surfaced Business Insider article published in August 2021, citing interviews with “greater than a dozen current and former employees” that said DeepMind had issued “confidential settlements” to “former employees who had worked under Suleyman and complained about his behavior.”
Suleyman was accused by unnamed sources of “just going crazy out of nowhere,” yelling, humiliating and making employees cry after their meetings with him.
As Business Insider summarized on former worker.”
Regardless, but additionally as a dent in Microsoft's aura of fine feeling concerning the announcement, several engineers and entrepreneurs have weighed in on the concentration of power within the fast-moving field of generative AI.
Interestingly, at the top of last 12 months Microsoft Nadella announced that OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman will likely be joining Microsoft to steer a brand new AI division after Altman was fired by the board of nonprofit holding company OpenAI, only to seek out Altman reinstated as CEO inside days and far of the old board resigned.
It now appears that Microsoft is moving forward with a plan to create a brand new AI division, only with a distinct – and maybe even more controversial – leader on the helm.
