The co-founder of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence lab owned by Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been put on leave after controversy with some of his projects, according to Bloomberg.
"Mustafa is taking time out right now after 10 hectic years," a spokesperson from DeepMind told Bloomberg. DeepMind did not confirm why Mr. Suleyman was placed on leave.
Mr. Suleyman spearheads the "applied" division at DeepMind, which is dedicated to research in health, energy and other fields. He has served as advocate for AI and ethical guidelines needed for the technology.
Since creating DeepMind in 2010, Mr. Suleyman has grown its health team to a 100-person department. However, his work has also faced criticism. In July 2017 after releasing its mobile app Streams, which was designed to help physicians identify patients at risk of developing acute kidney injury, a U.K. data privacy watchdog learned DeepMind's partnered Royal Free Hospital had illegally given DeepMind access to 1.6 million patient records.
In 2018, Google transferred the team working on Streams to its own division, called Google Health.