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Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

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Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#21

Post by colesantiago »

tosh wrote: post #7

can anyone with corporate background decipher if that is good for demis or not?

It is good for Demis and Google overall.

This is a promotion for Demis and this could be a path for Demis to be CEO of Alphabet in the future in the AI era.

Google already invested in Discovery Loop (Jeff Dean, Orol Vinyals, Quoc Le and Sanjay Ghemawat's company), so what is happening is still a win in investment terms.

The question is about Sundar's future at Google, he is a mobile era CEO at Alphabet and I would hazard a guess he will probably step down in less than 3 years.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#23

Post by misiti3780 »

hypnodrones wrote: post #18

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

I disagree - I will be surprised if google doesnt win the AI race long term. They have the money, the chips, and the ability to attract talent.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#24

Post by rvz »

eamag wrote: post #12

Google's stock dropped 5% right away, 200billion of value

And? I bought more. This is excellent news.

This over-reaction is why people can't see over a long time horizon.

This is great news for Google as they realize that Sundar is the problem and he will soon leave Google for Demis to be the new CEO of Alphabet (Google) which I am predicting. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868160

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#26

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

hypnodrones wrote: post #18

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

> Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

It's not really clear what their gameplan is. From the outside, it looks like they're asleep at the wheel. Qwen/Deepseek/Kimi are crushing them from the cheap-and-open side, and they're not remotely competitive with Mythos/Sol or even plain-vanilla Opus on the "premium" tier.

Gemini does actually have its uses, but they're very very marginal and niche.

From day one everybody was saying that Google would eventually capture the AI market, but it looks more remote than ever. Maybe Hassabis' personal inclination towards AI-for-science, and physics/chemistry in particular -- as opposed to consumer AI and coding AI -- has hurt them commercially.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#27

Post by gboss »

misiti3780 wrote: post #23
hypnodrones wrote: post #18

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

I disagree - I will be surprised if google doesnt win the AI race long term. They have the money, the chips, and the ability to attract talent.

Ever heard of the innovator’s dilemma? Don’t underestimate the inertia of large companies and their unwillingness to pivot from their cash cow.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#28

Post by reducesuffering »

misiti3780 wrote: post #23
hypnodrones wrote: post #18

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

I disagree - I will be surprised if google doesnt win the AI race long term. They have the money, the chips, and the ability to attract talent.

> ability to attract talent.

No, the top talent is clearly at Anthropic and OpenAI

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#29

Post by hypnodrones »

misiti3780 wrote: post #23
hypnodrones wrote: post #18

Today I saw one of the most talented engineers I know and worked with leave DeepMind and now I probably know part of the "why". Dark clouds hovering over Google's AI game.

I disagree - I will be surprised if google doesnt win the AI race long term. They have the money, the chips, and the ability to attract talent.

Agree that I would (and do) still place my bet on them for the long term. Maybe the outcome will be a couple of good startups seeded and DeepMind _really_ focusing on LLMs now.

Re: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs

#30

Post by atleastoptimal »

I think there's one weirdly simple reason DeepMind isn't doing as well as OpenAI and Anthropic. I may be wrong on this.

OpenAI and Anthropic went from tiny startups to huge companies. As a consequence the stock options/RSU's offered to the employees paid off a far higher percentage ROI than any stock options a DeepMind (and thus Google) employee would get (since Google is already huge). This disincentivizes people who truly believe in the economically transformative power of AI to work at Google since their benefits will be capped by Google being large + having public company obligations.

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