Gemini 2.0 is the next chapter for Google AI
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Demis Hassabis receives the Nobel Prize in chemistry in Sweden. Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Google Gemini 2.0 — a major upgrade to the core workings of Google's AI that the company launched Wednesday — is designed to help generative AI move from answering users' questions to taking action on its own, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tells Axios.
Why it matters: Google, like others in the industry, is heavily touting the potential of AI agents. But the technology needs a boost in performance and accuracy if it's going to be able to act reliably with less human supervision.
- "You actually want a system to not just give you information, but actually go and be able to complete tasks for you," Hassabis said this week in a video interview from Sweden, where on Tuesday he accepted this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Catch up quick: Google Wednesday introduced Gemini 2.0 Flash, which the company says is twice as fast as its predecessor and more powerful than the larger "pro" version of Gemini 1.5.
- It also announced a number of prototypes and products built on top of the new technology, with additional versions of Gemini 2.0 set to debut in January.
The big picture: Hassabis said building AI systems that can take action on their own has been DeepMind's focus since its early days teaching computers to play games such as chess and Go.
- "We were always working towards agent-based systems," Hassabis said. "From the beginning, they were able to plan and then carry out actions and achieve objectives."
- Hassabis said AI systems that can act as semi-autonomous agents also represent an important intermediate step on the path toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that can match or surpass human capabilities.
- "If we think about the path to AGI, then obviously you need a system that can reason, break down problems and carry out actions in the world," he said.
Zoom in: Google is now incorporating Gemini 2.0 in a variety of ways into both research projects and shipping products.
- The new model is beginning to power the AI Overviews shown atop Google search results.
- Google is also using Gemini 2.0 in a new version of its experimental Project Astra interactive AI assistant. (Read our hands-on look at the updated Astra.)
- The company also debuted agents for gaming and coding, as well as Project Mariner, an experimental Chrome plugin that can take action across various websites.
Between the lines: Hassabis acknowledged that Google and others are running out of room to improve large language models just by increasing their size.
- "There is evidence of diminishing returns I think across the industry," Hassabis said, noting that at least when it comes to text, companies are running out of new sources for training data.
Yes, but: Though the new generation of models may not be delivering leaps as staggering as their predecessors, the improvements are still meaningful, Hassabis said — but he believes large language models alone won't get the industry to AGI.
- "It's always been my expectation and my contention for years that we still need probably two or three more big breakthroughs of the level that we came up with in the past with deep reinforcement learning and transformers specifically...to get to AGI," he said.
