According to an internal document viewed by the firm, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google and board member of Alphabet (GOOGL, Financials), advised staff members at DeepMind, the artificial intelligence branch, to extend their work hours and office presence.

Emphasizing the need of accelerating artificial intelligence research, Brin advised DeepMind team members to stay in the office every weekday and work sixty hours a week. Emphasizing the developing competitiveness in generative artificial intelligence—also known as artificial general intelligence—his lecture concentrated on Google has capacity to dominate in the industry, he noted, but it has to move faster.

His initiative goes against Google's current office policies, which demand staff members to work three days a week in the office. Brin, who does not hold an executive position, sent the message on his own and it did not come from DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

Brin also questioned Google's method of artificial intelligence technology content control. Arguing that the company should depend more on user interactions with its artificial intelligence models, he advised staff members not to produce "nanny products" and seek fewer content restrictions.

Supported by Microsoft (MSFT, Financials), Google has been trying to strengthen its AI division since OpenAI started ChatGPT in November 2022, thereby igniting competition among major digital corporations. Google answered by coming up with artificial intelligence algorithms.

Previously warned of challenges ahead, CEO Sundar Pichai stated in December that increasing regulatory scrutiny and competition in the AI field will make 2025 a challenging year.