DeepMind CEO and co-founder Mustafa Suleyman leaves Google

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman leaves Google for Greylock Partners, a venture capital financing company. Suleyman has served as vice president of policy and application of artificial intelligence for eight years since the acquisition of his company by Google.

Mustafa Suleyman was one of the founders of DeepMind Technologies in 2010, which was acquired by Google in 2014 for an estimated $570 million. Since the takeover, he was responsible for the branch that developed practical applications of AI, although he was partly laid off in recent years, according to The New York Times.

Although he himself was not formally trained in AI development, DeepMind under his leadership at Google focused on applications in healthcare, among other things, a direction that parent company Alphabet is still pursuing. Google’s subsidiary was also responsible for training bots that can play games in a ‘human way’.

Suleyman was an outspoken opponent of using artificial intelligence for military purposes. That eventually happened when Google helped out with a US Department of Defense drone image recognition project. After much protest from employees of the search giant, the deal was eventually called off.

Since 2019, some of Suleyman’s responsibilities have been removed after it was revealed that he had “bullied” employees of DeepMind. In a podcast from his new employer, he acknowledges his misconduct and says he still regrets his attitude towards employees.

Source image Mustafa Suleyman from 2019: Joi Ito. License under CC-BY 2.0