In some sense, it's PR, but not in the typical gimmicky way. Alphabet has had DeepMind for a while, and at this point with all of the competition in AI, it doesn't make sense to keep DeepMind at arm's length. I personally think it's a good move and gives me more confidence, but it doesn't affect me directly. I do worry what redundancies this causes with Brain and Research though.
In some sense, it's PR, but not in the typical gimmicky way. Alphabet has had DeepMind for a while, and at this point with all of the competition in AI, it doesn't make sense to keep DeepMind at arm's length. I personally think it's a good move and gives me more confidence, but it doesn't affect me directly. I do worry what redundancies this causes with Brain and Research though.