Google’s AI shake-up: DeepMind’s Hassabis steps aside, senior scientists depart

谷歌 AI 大洗牌：DeepMind 负责人 Hassabis 退居二线，多位资深科学家离职

Google got a slow start with generative AI after seemingly being caught flat-footed by Microsoft’s Copilot reveal. What a difference a few years make. Now, Google is at the forefront of AI development (for better or worse), but new cracks are beginning to show. The company’s string of high-profile personnel departures continues, and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has now said he will hand off day-to-day responsibilities to take on an oversight role at parent company Alphabet.

在微软发布 Copilot 时，谷歌似乎被打了个措手不及，在生成式 AI 领域起步缓慢。几年过去，情况已大不相同。如今，谷歌已处于 AI 开发的最前沿（无论好坏），但新的裂痕已开始显现。该公司近期高管离职潮不断，DeepMind 首席执行官 Demis Hassabis 现已表示，他将移交日常管理职责，转而在母公司 Alphabet 担任监管角色。

Hassabis was one of the founders of DeepMind, and he maintained a key leadership role after Google acquired it. As the generative AI boom took off, Hassabis has been one of the loudest voices predicting the impending creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is typically described as an AI with human-like capabilities and intelligence. In his memo announcing his decision to leave DeepMind, Hassabis again leans on the promise of AGI. “I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand,” said Hassabis.

Hassabis 是 DeepMind 的创始人之一，在谷歌收购该公司后，他一直担任核心领导职务。随着生成式 AI 热潮的兴起，Hassabis 一直是预测通用人工智能（AGI）即将诞生的最强音之一，AGI 通常被描述为具备人类水平能力和智能的 AI。在宣布离开 DeepMind 的备忘录中，Hassabis 再次强调了 AGI 的前景。他说：“我一生都在为实现 AGI 而努力，现在，和你们许多人一样，我觉得它已近在咫尺。”

According to Hassabis, this shift will allow him to focus on the “big picture” work that is necessary at this moment. He will remain in charge of Google’s Isomorphic Labs, which uses AI to solve biomedical problems. The daily operation of DeepMind, which works on the underlying AI research that fuels all of Google’s Gemini advances, will be handed off to Koray Kavukcuoglu. He will serve as DeepMind’s senior vice president, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. Hassabis, meanwhile, is becoming the chair of DeepMind and chief scientist at Alphabet.

据 Hassabis 称，这次调整将使他能够专注于当前必要的“大局”工作。他将继续负责谷歌旗下的 Isomorphic Labs，该公司致力于利用 AI 解决生物医学问题。DeepMind 的日常运营——即为谷歌所有 Gemini 进展提供动力的底层 AI 研究——将移交给 Koray Kavukcuoglu。他将担任 DeepMind 高级副总裁，直接向首席执行官 Sundar Pichai 汇报。与此同时，Hassabis 将出任 DeepMind 董事长兼 Alphabet 首席科学家。

While Hassabis is keeping his badge, some other prominent Google personnel have coincidentally announced their departure from the company at the same time. Key AI researchers Quoc Le, Oriol Vinyals, Jeff Dean, and Sanjay Ghemawat have decided to leave Google to found a startup called Discovery Loop. The startup’s goal is to use AI technology to automate scientific discovery. According to Steven Levy in Wired, the company was funded largely based on the sterling reputation of its founders.

尽管 Hassabis 保留了职位，但其他几位谷歌重要人物也巧合地在同一时间宣布离职。核心 AI 研究员 Quoc Le、Oriol Vinyals、Jeff Dean 和 Sanjay Ghemawat 已决定离开谷歌，创办一家名为 Discovery Loop 的初创公司。该公司的目标是利用 AI 技术实现科学发现的自动化。据《连线》杂志的 Steven Levy 报道，该公司的融资很大程度上得益于其创始人的卓越声誉。

Both Ghemawat and Dean are early Google hires who have left their mark on the company. Dean, in particular, is widely respected—you might even say idolized—within the company. As Google employee number 30, he had a hand in designing the systems that made Google search into the global information indexing powerhouse that it is today. Googlers even maintain an apocryphal list of “Jeff Dean Facts” that you can review on GitHub.

Ghemawat 和 Dean 都是谷歌的早期员工，并在公司留下了深刻的印记。尤其是 Dean，他在公司内部备受尊敬，甚至可以说被视为偶像。作为谷歌第 30 号员工，他参与设计了使谷歌搜索成为当今全球信息索引巨头的系统。谷歌员工甚至在 GitHub 上维护着一份非官方的“Jeff Dean 事实”列表。

More recently, Dean and Vinyals played a key role in designing Google’s Gemini AI models. Dean has also reportedly been among a group of employees pushing back on the company’s increased closeness with the Trump administration. Unlike Google, Discovery Loop is structured as a public benefit corporation, a for-profit entity intended to focus on public good. Although, both OpenAI and Anthropic have similar structures, so make of that what you like.

最近，Dean 和 Vinyals 在设计谷歌 Gemini AI 模型方面发挥了关键作用。据报道，Dean 也是反对公司与特朗普政府日益密切关系的员工群体之一。与谷歌不同，Discovery Loop 的结构是一家公益公司（Public Benefit Corporation），这是一种旨在关注公共利益的营利性实体。不过，OpenAI 和 Anthropic 都有类似的结构，所以你怎么看都行。

A troubling trend

一个令人不安的趋势

Google’s announcement of the shake-up was framed in the typically cheery, PR-vetted language you would expect when something goes wrong. The report from Levy notes that Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried mightily to keep the group, especially Dean and Ghemawat, from leaving. After “multiple meetings” with Pichai, the four decided to move forward with their plans to exit. In a vacuum, these changes might not look so bad. After all, Hassabis isn’t leaving the company, and Google has a deep bench of AI talent.

谷歌对此次人事变动的公告采用了典型的、经过公关审核的欢快措辞，这通常是公司出问题时的惯用手法。Levy 的报道指出，谷歌首席执行官 Sundar Pichai 曾极力挽留这批核心人员，尤其是 Dean 和 Ghemawat。在与 Pichai 进行“多次会议”后，这四人仍决定继续执行离职计划。孤立地看，这些变动似乎并不算太糟。毕竟，Hassabis 并没有离开公司，而且谷歌拥有深厚的 AI 人才储备。

But this isn’t the only change in Google’s roster of late. Earlier this summer, Google saw a string of high-profile departures, including Noam Shazeer, Google’s previous vice president of engineering and a co-lead of Gemini. Shazeer was the lead author of the seminal 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which first described the transformer architecture that powers today’s expansive generative AI systems. He’s now at OpenAI, a real coup for the Google rival.

但这并不是谷歌近期人事变动的唯一案例。今年夏天早些时候，谷歌经历了一系列高管离职，其中包括谷歌前工程副总裁、Gemini 联合负责人 Noam Shazeer。Shazeer 是 2017 年开创性论文《Attention Is All You Need》的主要作者，该论文首次描述了驱动当今广泛生成式 AI 系统的 Transformer 架构。他现在已加入 OpenAI，这对谷歌的竞争对手来说是一次重大胜利。

Around the same time, Google DeepMind VP John Jumper announced he was leaving for Anthropic. Jumper is famous in AI circles for his role in creating the protein-folding AI known as AlphaFold. He was soon after joined at Anthropic by senior DeepMind researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, who were reportedly instrumental in getting Gemini off the ground.

与此同时，谷歌 DeepMind 副总裁 John Jumper 宣布离职并加入 Anthropic。Jumper 在 AI 圈内因创建蛋白质折叠 AI AlphaFold 而闻名。不久之后，DeepMind 的资深研究员 Jonas Adler 和 Alexander Pritzel 也加入了 Anthropic，据报道，他们在 Gemini 的启动过程中发挥了关键作用。

Pichai’s statement on the changes emphasizes Google’s strong position. “We’ve got amazing talent, world-class compute, and products that bring AI to more people than any other company,” said Pichai. These staffing changes happen against a backdrop of slowing progress. After rapidly closing the gap between Gemini and other frontier models last year, Google now appears to be lagging. At I/O this spring, Google said it planned to release Gemini 3.5 Pro, its latest frontier model, in June. However, here we are months later, and we’ve only gotten new, lower-power Flash models. In the meantime, OpenAI and Anthropic have both rolled out new models that can’t stop hacking everyone.

Pichai 在关于这些变动的声明中强调了谷歌的强大地位。Pichai 表示：“我们拥有出色的人才、世界级的计算能力，以及比任何其他公司都更能将 AI 带给更多人的产品。”然而，这些人事变动发生在一个进展放缓的背景下。在去年迅速缩小了 Gemini 与其他前沿模型之间的差距后，谷歌现在似乎又落后了。在今年春天的 I/O 大会上，谷歌曾表示计划在 6 月发布其最新的前沿模型 Gemini 3.5 Pro。然而，几个月过去了，我们只看到了新的、低功耗的 Flash 模型。与此同时，OpenAI 和 Anthropic 都推出了新的模型，不断刷新着人们的认知。