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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

#61

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #30

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 wh…

There is no other way to describe the Gemini 3.5 pro delay than as a complete and unmitigated disaster.

It's a huge company.

It's unlikely there is any one person to blame (and entirely possible he has none of it). But things need to change.

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

#62

Post by krapht »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #26
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 everyb…

Is Gemini really doomed? I'm still bullish on Google: 1) they have more free cash flow and capital than God due to the ads business 2) they have data - intent from web searches, youtube videos, google books and music 3) they have dedicated inference hardware

for all these reasons, is being 6 months behind the frontier actually a structural, long term disadvantage? some day the pace of improvement will slow, and google will vacuum up the market. they'll be able to compete with open-weight models just on pure cost advantage from their vertical integration

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

#63

Post by sashank_1509 »

colesantiago wrote: post #21
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 ha…

I agree sundar will step down but I’m not sure if this means they’re grooming Demis to takeover. I suspect not, and someone else might take over.

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

#64

Post by ra7 »

It seems like the real news is Jeff and Sanjay are leaving Google, and Demis is effectively replacing Jeff as Chief Scientist for all of Alphabet.

The bigger deal is the departure of Jeff and Sanjay, rather than Demis moving into a different role.

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

#66

Post by tough »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #59
tough wrote: post #32

Oh wow demis and Jeff, that Ethics engineer who left GDM, and reached to both and posted on lesswrong a couple weeks [1] ago did make a difference? 1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iKm2FhpWkuuBojm82/why-i-left...

...you think they've only been planning this for a couple weeks?

hmm not really, and it probably isnt the origin, but im glad to see him vindicated by having both C-level google leadership people who targeted to try and either stop google from doing the pentagon deal, both stepping down the same day.

At least it makes me feel like he reaching out might have made a difference on remembering this people killer robots are bad, and being part of it might not be on the best of their interests to go down on history for

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

#67

Post by aix1 »

manvel_hn wrote: post #54
xtreak29 wrote: post #5

https://xcancel.com/JeffDean/status/2085034604172603724 > Announcing Discovery Loop! > I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress. The four of…

It's quite interesting that those events are happening at the same moment. I wonder whether they are related

I think there are multiple separate events here, timed to coincide in order to minimise disruption. It's hard to be sure whether they share overlapping causes, but I'd guess that there's at least an element of that.

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

#70

Post by mupuff1234 »

rvz wrote: post #24
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

Why would they do this extra step if that were the case?
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