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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

#121

Post by fluidcruft »

krapht wrote: post #62
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 googl…

I don't know if they are doomed but https://isaiprofitable.com/ seems concerning about Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft.

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

#122

Post by vineyardmike »

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…

The answer is far more benign.

They getting a higher ROI renting their TPUs to Anthropic et al instead of performing training and serving their own models. Google cloud has insane backlog, and has rapidly expanded to satisfy it. While those DCs get built, they’re cannibalizing their own products for it.

This makes sense because (1) they are investors in Anthropic, so they still win and (2) they can always catch up on model training later when the profit opportunity shifts, or abandon it if there is no way to recapture that value.

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

#123

Post by VulgarExigency »

xnx wrote: post #95
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…

OpenAI and Anthropic have the freedom to do absolutely insane things like negligently hack other companies. It would be stock price suicide if anything even remotely happened with Google.

There's no doubt in my mind that they set up the conditions for their models to escape the sandboxes. "haha oops our incredibly powerful models escaped we need 1 trillion more dollars and really this is yet another reason why no one else should be allowed to build this technology"

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

#124

Post by logicchains »

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…

It's not a ML talent problem. You don't need to be a genius deep learning researcher to think "Hey, maybe if we massively throttle and degrade the quality of our model while still charging the same price, that might drive people away" (as happened with Gemini 2.5 Pro, the one model where Google really was SOTA). Google's likely been providing insufficient training compute to DeepMind the same way they've been nickel-and-diming their customers, funneling it all to Search instead because that's where the money comes from.

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

#126

Post by godwinson__4-8 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #61
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.

People keep saying the same thing about Google lagging behind and always end up looking rather silly. Google was going to lose search to OpenAI. Then people complained there was too much AI in Google search. Now it's pretty good and par for the course.

Yes it's a huge company.

So they are slower. Then they will surface it across their massive product base and keep generating cash. While having a hand in Anthropic and others via investment anyway.

Google doesn't need to offer you the bleeding edge at startup pace. They're playing a different game. When the bubble pops they will be well positioned really no matter the outcome to continue to capitalize as their competitors implode or get absorbed.

The idea a delay is a "complete and unmitigated disaster" is just laughable. People have been saying this about Google since ChatGPT first invaded the public consciousness. Google will continue to do well, the histrionics of people like you aside.

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

#127

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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

I sold out of my position. I can imagine a story where it works out in the long term, but I don't see how this doesn't cause terrible retention problems in the short to medium term. I felt a pull to launch a startup when I heard Jeff Dean was leaving, and I'm a long time big corp employee who hasn't been at Google in over a decade.

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

#128

Post by chanux »

tanh wrote: post #87
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah. I’m guessing they’re behind the Chinese models in capability now

Just today my Pixel failed to do the right thing on "Set an alarm in 15 minutes" thanks to Gemini. This has worked reliably since Google Assistant was introduced.

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

#129

Post by giwook »

650 wrote: post #65

The first sentence is quite telling >We’ve got amazing talent, world-class compute and products… Products are third on the list. Google is an incubator for talent first and foremost. Products are an afterthought

My opinion is that you're reading way too much into this. Talent is obviously first. Without that you have no products worth speaking of.

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

#130

Post by hyperpape »

reasonableklout wrote: post #115
atonse wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's anything like what happened with others (like Eric Schmidt), Chairman is basically "you're out from day to day stuff but we'll give you a pot of money to say you're still senior and still here, to save face and the stock price, while you give a bunch of talks for the next few months" So yes fancy title, but basically, someone who can move the stock price is quitting and we're trying to ease the perception of…

But he's not just Chairman, he's taking the title of Chief Scientist. It sounds more like moving into an IC role.

The idea that “Chief Scientist” means anything more specific about what he does than “he’s a big shot who was in technology” is misguided.

A chief scientist can be super influential, or a guy who’s on the slow path to retirement but is keeping a paycheck to keep up appearances.

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