Washington (TIP)- Sundar Pichai said that employees need to be more focused “in how we work, collaborate, discuss and even disagree.” The message came in a blog post by the Google CEO following nine employees of the company being arrested for staging sit-in protests. The employees were protesting against the company working closely with Israel after which another 28 employees were fired in connection to the protests.
Sundar Pichai said that the company has a culture of vibrant, open discussion “that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action”. Emphasizing that it is important to preserve this culture, he said, “Ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”
“When we come to work, our goal is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That supersedes everything else and I expect us to act with a focus that reflects that,” he added.
Chris Rackow, head of security at Google, also sent a stern message to employees saying that every employee should know how to conduct themselves in a workplace. He said, “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again.”
Alphabet-owned Google has announced a significant internal reorganisation aimed at accelerating its advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and strengthening its position in the tech industry. The move involves consolidating various teams responsible for AI development, Android, and hardware products.
In a statement released on Thursday, Google revealed plans to merge its Research and DeepMind divisions’ teams focusing on building AI models. This consolidation aims to streamline AI development efforts, facilitating closer collaboration between research and practical application teams.
Furthermore, Google will relocate its Responsible AI teams from the Research division to DeepMind. This shift aims to ensure that AI models are developed with safety considerations from the outset, aligning with global concerns about AI ethics and regulation.
The consolidation comes in the wake of the successful development of Google’s advanced AI model, Gemini, by the DeepMind team. Gemini, unveiled last year, boasts capabilities to process various data formats, including video, audio, and text. However, Google faced criticism following inaccuracies in historical image generation, prompting a pause in certain image generation functionalities.