How Pichai killed DeepMind’s independence, and changed how Hassabis thinks about AI safety
Demis Hassabis spent over two years negotiating a semi-independent governance structure for DeepMind inside Alphabet—complete with a $1 billion walk-away plan and a proposed 3-3-3 oversight board. Sundar Pichai shut it down, arguing AI was too central to Google’s core business to be spun out. The failed experiment eventually changed how Hassabis thinks about AI

