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Google DeepMind Co-Founder Placed On Leave From AI Lab (bloomberg.com) 14

Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Google's high-profile AI lab DeepMind, has been placed on leave after controversy over some of the projects he led. Bloomberg reports: Mustafa Suleyman runs DeepMind's "applied" division, which seeks practical uses for the lab's research in health, energy and other fields. Suleyman is also a key public face for DeepMind, speaking to officials and at events about the promise of AI and the ethical guardrails needed to limit malicious use of the technology. "Mustafa is taking time out right now after 10 hectic years," a DeepMind spokeswoman said. She didn't say why he was put on leave.

He founded DeepMind in 2010 alongside current Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis. Four years later, Google bought DeepMind for 400 million pounds (currently $486 million), an ambitious bet on the potential of AI that set off an expensive race in Silicon Valley for specialists in the field. DeepMind soon began working on health-care research, eventually creating a division dedicated to the area. Suleyman, nicknamed "Moose" and whose mother was a nurse, led the development of the DeepMind Health team, building it into a 100-person unit.

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Google DeepMind Co-Founder Placed On Leave From AI Lab

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  • "Suleyman, nicknamed "Moose""

    I'm guessing he once bit someone's sister.

  • now, without paywall (Score:5, Informative)

    by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @06:49PM (#59110944)

    Come on, let's have some sources that aren't paywalled. Editors, stop slacking. Here they are:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tec... [bbc.co.uk]
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/te... [telegraph.co.uk]

    Meanwhile, The Economists's 1843 magazine has an in-depth article about Deepmind, including its connections with Peter Thiel and uber-nerd fashionable transhumanism and "singularity", and the conflicts of interest and ethics over any future artificial general intelligence: https://www.1843magazine.com/f... [1843magazine.com]

    • by nadass ( 3963991 )
      Thank you for those links!

      The 1843 article begs many questions and inspires many teams to showcase different theories/paradigms to artificial general intelligence (including my own teams). Somehow I never read the story ('til now).
  • Good old mom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @06:57PM (#59110956) Homepage Journal

    and whose mother was a nurse

    What exactly does this have to do with the story? Is it supporting it somehow that I'm just not seeing?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      It's a thread to why he may have chosen medical applications of AI over other options. He went with what he knew, and there is nothing particularly wrong with that.

    • by Paxtez ( 948813 )

      +1 if I had points.

      That is one of the strangest tidbits I've ever seen in a summary.

  • "Placed on leave" implies that it was imposed on Suleyman, but the linked articles don't report anything that would warrant this.

    Did he do something with all those medical records that was so evil it could not be named, or is there simply more evil in the village than is dreamed of?

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Google and the University of Chicago are getting sued over all the medical records the U hospital handed over. That seemed to me more like the university saying screw it, we don't need informed consent or research ethics approval, but maybe Deep Mind did some shady stuff in there too.

      • DeepMind also got a shady data sharing agreement going with an NHS trust for patient records. idk whether patient records belong to the patient or the NHS... I guess someone decided they didn't care either way..?
  • by Tom ( 822 )

    the co-founder of Google's high-profile AI lab DeepMind, has been placed on leave after controversy over some of the projects he led.

    That's how I expect a story about how the AI apocalypse ends the world begins.

    Will someone please buy the movie rights to his story?

    • "You know, we didn't have any problems when we had DeepMind merge the NHS and DMV records. It all went so swimmingly well! But then we added in the Federal School Lunch program records and SkyNet emerged 42 days later..."

In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble. -- Alan Perlis

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