The co-founder of Google DeepMind on leave

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The co-founder of DeepMind, the British company of artificial intelligence owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, went on leave of the company.

DeepMind did not explain why Mustafa Suleyman was taking a leave, but said that it was a mutual decision.

"Mustafa is taking time after 10 hectic years," the company said in a statement.

The company expects Mr. Suleyman to resume his role as DeepMind's Applied IA later this year.

The news was reported for the first time by Bloomberg, which linked the movement to recent controversies over some of DeepMind's work in the health sector.

The "Applied" DeepMind unit, which is responsible for finding and implementing practical applications of the company's research, was the subject of strong criticism in July 2017 about its Streams mobile application.

DeepMind was associated with the Royal Free Hospital in London to help doctors predict kidney damage cases by using the application. The British data regulator said the hospital was not talking enough to patients about how their data was being used – but that enforcement could continue to be used if "gaps" were corrected.

In November 2018, it was announced that the management and development of the application Streams would be taken over by a new division of Google Health.

Since then, the application has received much praise from hospital managers, which has greatly accelerated the diagnoses.

"It's a huge change to be able to receive alerts about patients anywhere in the hospital," said Mary Emerson, of the Royal Free Hospital, during an interview. with the BBC earlier this month.

"Healthcare is mobile and real-time, and it's the first device that has allowed me to see mobile results in real-time."

The BBC has not been able to contact Mr. Suleyman directly.

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