Mustafa Suleiman's artificial intelligence laboratory DeepMind has been bought by Google for £400 million. Photo: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS
Google has turned the Internet into a “spiral of decline,” said the co-founder of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) laboratory.
Mustafa Suleiman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “Business the model that Google developed broke the Internet.”
He said search results became rife with “clickbait” to keep people “hung and engrossed in the page for as long as possible.”
Information on the Internet is “clickbait.” buried in the depths of verbiage and chatter,” Mr. Suleiman argues, so websites can “sell more advertising,” enabled by Google's technology.
Mr. Suleiman was one of three men who founded the pioneering DeepMind artificial intelligence laboratory in London in 2010. The company was bought by Google for £400 million and became the cornerstone of the search giant's AI operations.
Mr. Suleiman, 39, left Google 18 months ago and has since founded rival venture Inflection AI. The company is developing a conversational chatbot similar to ChatGPT as artificial intelligence companies race to usurp Google's online dominance.
The entrepreneur has developed a chatbot called Pi that he says can act as a kind of confidant or AI coach. He raised more than $1.5 billion for the new technology.
Criticism of his former employer came as Suleiman told the Telegraph of plans to create a new international body to monitor AI threats.
Mr Suleiman, along with billionaire former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, plan to submit proposals for the creation International AI Security Panel at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's global technology summit next month.
The DeepMind co-founder said the group could be “modeled on the IPCC” – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – to “establish scientific consensus on the current capabilities” of AI.
Mr Suleiman said the IPCC . which was first created in 1988, was “good inspiration” for creating a “hard body” to predict AI risks. Other supporters of the plan include Reed Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn, and Florentino Cuellar, president of the Carnegie think tank.
The AI Commission will provide governments with regular assessments of the level of danger the technology poses.
The UK AI Safety Summit is due to take place at Bletchley Park and is expected to bring together world leaders and technology entrepreneurs to decide problems with “advanced artificial intelligence” that could cause “significant harm, including loss of life.”
Top lobbyists from companies such as Meta and Google are expected to attend the two-day summit on November 1 and 2. Kamala Harris, US Vice President, is expected to attend the event, and a Chinese delegation is also invited.
Leaders will try to find common ground on how to overcome the risks associated with AI. Officials are also believed to be considering creating an international AI safety institute.
Michelle Donelan, the technology minister, told the Telegraph that the conference will “look at the biggest risks and biggest opportunities associated with advanced artificial intelligence” by bringing together “companies, countries, and experts.”
Concerns about this technology were sparked by the immediate success of ChatGPT, which was seen as a wake-up call to world leaders regarding the speed of development of this technology.
A new wave of chatbots built on so-called “large language models” can answer questions and conduct online conversations in an almost superhuman way. They may write emails, essays, poetry or music, raising fears they could cause an upheaval in the job market.
In his recent book, The Coming Wave, Mr Suleiman called for a “containment” of high employment level. Take risks with AI so governments can stay ahead of events that could threaten jobs, elections and human life.
Mr Suleiman said chatbots could “compete with Google” by providing more accurate information than internet searches.
However, despite recent advances, many chatbots suffer from errors and in some cases can spread false information, creating obstacles to combat search engines.
Google is also developing a competing AI chatbot project called Bard.
Google has been contacted for comment.
Meanwhile, the government on Saturday confirmed 100 winners of a £5 million grant to fund artificial intelligence start-ups, including a business tackling clothing waste and a company putting the technology to use in vineyards.
Ms Donelan also announced an additional £32 million in grants for fast-growing AI businesses, which will be confirmed after the UK summit.
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