An article in The New York Times details an interesting new trend: leading technology companies are moving the desks of their artificial intelligence (AI) developers closer to their CEOs desks. For example, the AI developers in Google Brain share a floor with CEO Sundar Pichai; Overstock.com’s AI team sits directly outside the CEO’s office; and Facebook AI researchers sit very close to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandburg. “I can high-five Mark and Sheryl from my desk, and the AI team was right next to us,” said Facebook CTO, Mike Schroepfer.
The article says that these moves demonstrate how important AI has become to the overall success of technology companies. “Any CEO thinks a lot about where people are sitting — who they can walk around and have casual conversations with,” said Diane Greene, who oversees Google’s cloud computing team and sits on the board of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. “It is a very significant statement that [Pichai] has moved [Google Brain] right next him.”
