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Last week, DeepMind—the AI research lab and Google subsidiary—made headlines for a biotech breakthrough. This week, it’s making headlines for a very different reason.
Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind’s cofounder and an influential figure in AI, was placed on leave in July 2019 after employees reported his misconduct. Recently, it has come to light that these years of complaints tended to follow a similar thread, Insider reports: bullying and public humiliation. At least two incidents reportedly led to confidential settlements in excess of $150,000 each.
- “He used to say, ‘I crush people,”’ one former DeepMind employee told Insider.
It didn’t end there: In December 2019, after his return from leave, Google awarded Suleyman a promotion to VP of AI policy, putting just two layers between him and CEO Sundar Pichai. He also landed a seat on Google’s Advanced Technology Review Council (ATRC), which Bloomberg has called the Google AI ethics board “with actual power.”
Big picture: Google’s reported willingness to put up with Suleyman's behavior stands in stark contrast to its swift termination of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, former co-leads of its AI ethics team who produced research that challenged the company’s direction on large language models.—HF