David Watson to join Google DeepMind from King’s College London
David Watson is joining Google DeepMind next week while retaining an honorary appointment at King’s College London
David Watson is joining Google DeepMind next week, moving from his academic post at King’s College London into research focused on some of the longer-term technical questions around advanced AI.
Watson announced the move on LinkedIn, saying his work at Google DeepMind will cover “emerging topics in algorithmic information theory, world modeling, and post-AGI futures.”
He will not cut ties with King’s. Watson said he will retain an honorary appointment on the university’s Informatics faculty and continue collaborating with colleagues and PhD students.
The move takes him out of the classroom after several years in university teaching and research, something he acknowledged directly in his announcement.
“On a personal note, it is strange and a little sad to be out of the classroom for the first fall in a long time,” he wrote.
From university AI research to Google DeepMind
Watson joined King’s College London in 2022 and has worked across machine learning, causal inference and interpretability, including research in systems biology.
His recent work listed by King’s includes research on explainable AI, missing-value imputation using adversarial random forests, machine learning in biomedical research and causal effects.
Before King’s, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College London, where he worked on causality and machine learning and supervised graduate students at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence.
His academic background also includes doctoral study at the University of Oxford, where he later taught on the philosophy and ethics of information and the foundations of social data science.
Outside universities, Watson spent more than two years as Director of R&D at ThermoAI, overseeing research projects around combustion simulation and optimization.
That combination of theoretical AI, causality, machine learning and interdisciplinary research now feeds into the areas he says he will pursue at Google DeepMind.
Watson framed the move around the direction AI development may take over the coming years.
“I have come around to the idea that AI development could either go very wrong or very right, and the next few years may be decisive in setting the proper trajectory,” he wrote.
His new Google DeepMind position begins next week, while his honorary affiliation with King’s College London will continue alongside the move.
