What tool in Vertex AI automates and monitors machine learning systems in a serverless manner?

Vertex AI Pipelines is the correct choice as it is specifically designed to automate and monitor machine learning workflows in a serverless environment. This tool allows users to create, deploy, and manage ML pipelines, making it easier to manage the entire machine learning lifecycle, from data preparation to model training and deployment.

By providing a robust orchestration framework, Vertex AI Pipelines ensures that each phase of the ML process can run in parallel or sequentially, depending on the dependencies defined by the user. This automation is crucial in maintaining efficient ML operations, especially in larger projects where coordination between various tasks is necessary.

Furthermore, the serverless nature of Vertex AI Pipelines means that users do not need to worry about the underlying infrastructure required to run their ML workflows, allowing them to focus on model improvement and deployment rather than infrastructure management. This makes it a powerful tool for organizations looking to scale their machine learning efforts quickly and efficiently.

Other options, such as Dataflow, BigQuery ML, and Cloud Functions, serve different purposes within the Google Cloud ecosystem but do not offer the same level of integrated automation and management for machine learning systems as Vertex AI Pipelines does.