Google Moved Its Gemini AI Safety Team Into Lobbying, Blocking Researchers From Staying
Google Moved Its Gemini AI Safety Team Into Lobbying, Blocking Researchers From Staying
摘要: The researchers Google employs to determine whether Gemini could help someone synthesize a pathogen will soon report to the executive who runs Google'
正文
The researchers Google employs to determine whether Gemini could help someone synthesize a pathogen will soon report to the executive who runs Google's lobbying operations — a structural shift that denies the team the organizational independence that Google's own chief scientist, just six weeks earlier, declared essential to responsible AI oversight. The Wall Street Journal first reported the change on August 27, citing an
internal email about the move
.
Starting September 1, Google's roughly 90-person AI responsibility unit — the group that evaluates Gemini for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear risks, and that separately studies the psychological effects of chatbots on users — will leave Google DeepMind and
begin reporting to Kent Walker
, Google's President of Global Affairs. Walker's organization manages the company's relationships with regulators worldwide, oversees its lobbying strategy, and shapes Google's legislative messaging.
Several members of the team applied for transfers to research groups remaining inside DeepMind before the September 1 move. Those transfer requests were denied.
Researchers Sought to Stay in Research. They Were Told No.
The denied transfer requests are the most specific signal of what is actually happening inside Google's safety apparatus. Organizational restructurings happen at every large company; the question is whether the people most affected by them see the new arrangement as neutral or as a meaningful change in their working conditions. The researchers who asked to stay in DeepMind answered that question clearly.
Helen King, a Vice President at Google DeepMind who leads the responsibility unit, addressed staff in an internal email following the announcement. She assured the team that its core research mission, computing resources, staffing levels, and ability to publish externally would remain intact. She framed the change as part of a broader evolution of DeepMind toward a more conventional corporate stru