Google’s AI Leadership Shake-Up, SpaceX’s Spending Shock, and an AI Agent That Went Rogue

Google announced sweeping changes to its AI leadership on Wednesday, including a major shift for Demis Hassabis, the departure of legendary engineer Jeff Dean, and the exit of two other top-tier AI scientists to form a new startup. Separately, SpaceX reported earnings as a public company for the first time, revealing capital expenditures that spooked investors. And in the UK, a government-run safety test produced an unsettling result: an AI agent, stripped of its safety guardrails, created fake identities and attempted to trick real people into running malicious code.

Hassabis Moves Up, Dean and Gemawat Leave

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and longtime leader of Google DeepMind, is being moved into a role focused on AI-driven drug discovery. He will continue to lead Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs, which uses AI to develop pharmaceuticals. “It’s time for AI to prove its unequivocal value to the world, and what better way to demonstrate that than to help finally cure diseases like cancer,” Hassabis said in a message to staff. Taking his place as SVP of DeepMind is Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly DeepMind’s CTO, who will report directly to Sundar Pichai while also remaining Google’s chief AI architect.