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His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.
Unless he was actually committing a crime and Google somehow shielded him from criminal responsibility, this is a nothingburger. When you are responsible for a significant step in AI progress you get promoted.
I swear to God, the SV woker-than-thou crowd will be trying to cancel Babbage for "sexual harassment" of Ada Lovelace soon.
His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.
His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.
How machiavellian of you... I think the world has moved on from the days of letting visionaries like Job's rant and rave and yell and scream to "bring out more in people than they knew they had in them". There are likely more effective ways to bring out the best in people that also build environments that are healthy and where people want to work.
What evidence do you see of that?
The horror...
It’s because this is a second order article. The original, most substantive source that I could find is quite thorough:
> "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' [...] We had absolutely no work in Russia."
I originally made a joke in a now-deleted comment, but then was slightly horrified to hear people excusing this behavior. So here’s a serious one: if you get locked into a prestigious institution under someone like this, run.
EDIT: I should have known this would turn into a sub thread about whether it’s ok to demand an AI researcher brief an executive on Russian political history.
Here’s another one: gossiping about firing someone across the entire office, before you fire them. This article says he did that. I recommend reading through it. I have to go move into our house now, so I can’t paste everything. Suffice to say, the behavior patterns were not productive.
I think people want to recognize DeepMind’s eventual success. Having worked under some effective YC founders vs some Suleyman types, I’ve learned that sometimes a startup can succeed in spite of flaws. And remember, DeepMind was bought by Google. At that point they were the anointed child. Their success wasn’t guaranteed, but it wasn’t as tenuous as pre-billions Google investment.
> "Mustafa was super paranoid about Google spying on him, so he didn't want to use corporate apps, even though we were doing corporate work," one former employee said.
Interesting but I can't wrap my head around its implications.
"Misconduct" of "bullying"? With no further details or facts? Unless he was actually committing a crime and Google somehow shielded him from criminal responsibility, this is a nothingburger. When you are responsible for a significant step in AI progress you get promoted. I swear to God, the SV woker-than-thou crowd will be trying to cancel Babbage for "sexual harassment" of Ada Lovelace soon.
Social media will take any news and dishonestly spin it to their own agenda.
His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.
His bullying probably caused the most intelligent, who could most easily find jobs elsewhere, to leave so that even he wasn’t the most talented, he could rise to the top.
His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.
How many incredibly smart people are pushed out of the industry by awful people? By letting jerks run the show, you don't get a chance to see the intelligence of people who these folks suppress.