Microsoft’s synthetic intelligence head Mustafa Suleyman is constructing a crew targeted on shopper well being by hiring workers from an identical unit he as soon as led at Google DeepMind, because the rival firms race to create profitable purposes from the cutting-edge know-how.
Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in 2010, has employed Dominic King, the previous head of DeepMind’s well being unit and a UK-trained surgeon, as vice-president of Microsoft AI’s new London-based well being crew.
He has additionally poached Christopher Kelly, a medical analysis scientist at DeepMind and a neonatal intensive care physician at Evelina Youngsters’s Hospital in London, in addition to two others from his time on the AI start-up.
Microsoft’s new shopper AI well being division comes as tech teams rush to show generative AI right into a staple of on a regular basis life, in a bid to drive revenues from the fast-developing know-how. Sir Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chief government of DeepMind, can be targeted on healthcare, resembling main spin-off AI group Isomorphic Labs, which is engaged on drug discovery.
Well being has change into one of many progress areas within the AI growth. Shoppers have usually turned to the net for health-related queries, and a Deloitte survey this yr discovered that 48 per cent of respondents requested generative AI chatbots resembling ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Claude health-focused questions.
These embrace questions on particular well being situations, signs and psychological well being. Microsoft AI’s well being unit will give attention to all these shopper well being purposes utilizing generative AI.
The US tech group, which hired Suleyman this year, confirmed the creation of its new unit. “In our mission to tell, assist and empower everybody with accountable AI, well being is a important use case,” stated Microsoft. “We proceed to rent high expertise in assist of those efforts.”
Google DeepMind’s well being operation, based by Suleyman in 2016, grew to a crew of greater than 100 folks based mostly in London. The unit had signed a five-year partnership with 10 UK NHS hospitals to course of the medical knowledge of 1.6mn sufferers and launched an app to watch sufferers’ very important indicators.
Nonetheless, DeepMind was later embroiled in controversy over its work for the UK well being sector amid considerations in regards to the safety of affected person knowledge. This led to Suleyman’s unit being spun off in 2019 by mum or dad firm Alphabet right into a Google unit in California led by David Feinberg, the previous chief government of Geisinger, one of many US’s largest personal well being teams.
Suleyman left DeepMind that very same yr, taking on a brand new coverage function at Google’s California headquarters earlier than leaving in 2022 for a stint as a enterprise investor. He later created AI start-up Inflection.
In March, Microsoft employed Suleyman from Inflection in addition to most of its workers, together with Karén Simonyan, co-founder and chief scientist of Inflection, and a former DeepMind researcher himself.
Different latest hires for Microsoft’s AI well being unit embrace Peter Hames, the previous chief government of UK digital well being start-up Massive Well being, and Bay Gross, co-founder of digital healthcare supplier Cityblock Well being.
As a part of his broader crew, Suleyman has additionally employed former DeepMind colleagues Nando de Freitas and Trevor Again, who led the start-up’s well being analysis crew. Nonetheless, de Freitas and Again is not going to work particularly on Microsoft’s well being purposes.
