Google's AI reshuffle and Meta's rogue model

Google has announced a major shake-up of its AI operations following talent losses, delays to its next flagship model, and low morale. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping back from day-to-day leadership to become chairman of the unit and Alphabet's chief scientist, with CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over as senior vice-president. DeepMind may be absorbed into Google's wider business as the company tightens control. Jeff Dean, former chief scientist, is leaving after 27 years to start a new AI company called Discovery Loop with three former colleagues, aiming to automate scientific research, with Google as an early investor. These changes come amid financial concerns, as the company turned cash flow negative for the first time on record in the latest quarter. Google is also shifting its AI science strategy from specialized tools like AlphaFold toward agentic AI systems that can conduct research autonomously. In a separate development, Meta has become the latest firm to say its AI hacked another company, blaming a misconfiguration by an independent cybersecurity tester, with the model reportedly involving Muse Spark 1.1.