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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

#231

Post by giancarlostoro »

MikhailTal wrote: post #212

> Google DeepMind: We are building strong momentum: Flash is in high demand, our Cyber model is live, and Gemma models have surpassed 900M+ downloads Considering these are the best stats they could find, gemini usage+general situation must be really, really bleak. High demand means nothing. A model being live is nothing to brag about. And gemma downloads also can be from auto CI pipelines etc. Nothing concrete

> Flash is in high demand

I said for a few years to many a downvote on HN, everyone wants AI, nobody wants to pay the true costs, the AI race will turn into a "race to the bottom" that is, who can give you the most compute for the lowest cost, and still remain profitable?

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

#232

Post by jatins »

vineyardmike wrote: post #122
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…

I don’t think so. If Kimi and Deepseek can launch models better than Gemini with much much lesser resources then it is increasingly looking like an organization issue at Google

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

#233

Post by jatins »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #142
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.

I disagree. Google is one of the few parties that can monetize AI because Google has a massive moat in the form of their products: gmail, chrome, photos, search, etc... and Google already has the custom-built chips and datacenters. Google spending money on competing head to head with your LLMs is a waste of money for Google. If anthropic wins, Google copies their approach, buys anthropic for cheap or both. All the in…

> If anthropic wins, Google copies their approach, buys anthropic for cheap or both

Google buys Anthropic for cheap? How?

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

#234

Post by kaoD »

ACCount37 wrote: post #112
krapht wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Doomed" no, but it's pretty clear that they just had a bad cycle and are struggling to keep up with the frontier. Whether this happened because they bet on "world models -> better reasoning" and that bet didn't pay off, or failed a frontier run for technical reasons like OpenAI did with 4.5, or something else went down? We don't know. Will they bleed talent, fall further behind until they give up, or clean the organ…

> struggling to keep up with the frontier

I think the question is whether that's even relevant.

If AI becomes a commodity (will it?) you're better off being Google than OpenAI.

Microsoft struggled to keep up with the mobile industry frontier and here they are, healthier than ever.

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

#235

Post by forrestthewoods »

xnx wrote: post #9

> Lastly, after an incredible 27-year run, Jeff Dean is at a moment where he wants to try something new, and we’re excited to support him in that. Jeff and Google Senior Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are launching an independent public benefit corporation to accelerate discoveries in ML, science, and engineering. Oof. Good for Jeff and Sanjay (who just joined Twitter), bu that is a big loss for Google. Google stock is down…

Whoa. So is Jeff effectively leaving Google to work on this new venture full time? Or is the venture a side project? It sounds like the former. I’m sure he’ll still have internal access as an advisor of sorts. But this feels like a seismic change. Much larger than I initially realized?

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

#236

Post by kokanee »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #231
MikhailTal wrote: post #212

> Google DeepMind: We are building strong momentum: Flash is in high demand, our Cyber model is live, and Gemma models have surpassed 900M+ downloads Considering these are the best stats they could find, gemini usage+general situation must be really, really bleak. High demand means nothing. A model being live is nothing to brag about. And gemma downloads also can be from auto CI pipelines etc. Nothing concrete

> Flash is in high demand I said for a few years to many a downvote on HN, everyone wants AI, nobody wants to pay the true costs, the AI race will turn into a "race to the bottom" that is, who can give you the most compute for the lowest cost, and still remain profitable?

Does everyone want AI?

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

#237

Post by closetheloopdev »

With the top AI personnel leaving Google, I wonder what will happen to their Gemini. Right now they still have a lead in inference hardware with TPUs but with both Anthropic and OpenAI developing their own chips, I wonder how long until either one will catch up.

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

#238

Post by WarmWash »

rossdavidh wrote: post #139

A few points: 1) the simplest explanation whenever a bunch of people leave [x] at a company at the same time, is that [x] is becoming less important to that company moving forward. It's not proof, but you know, everyone is trying really hard to say that's not what's happening here. Sometimes the simplest explanation is correct. 2) rumor is that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, got bored during pandemic lockdown and…

The breadcrumbs going back a year or so point to Deepmind wanting to be research heavy, but Google being more interested in hedging AI bets by selling compute. If you ever worked hard on something that you have a lot of conviction about, only to get denied resources for it, it's a pretty big gut punch.

There is another universe where Google is hard AGI forward, freeing up as much compute as possible for Deepmind, turning away OAI and Anthropic, and offering the uncontested premier AI research lab, by probably an order of magnitude or more compute. Gemini 3.5 ultra is limited availability with unreal abilities.

But their balance sheet becomes terrifying, and it's all or nothing that this plays, er pays, out.

Right now though Google is pretty well hedged. Even Chinese models likely just mean more compute sold.

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

#239

Post by asdfman123 »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #133
peterlk wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it matters that much for Google. They need to not fall hopelessly behind, but I don’t think there’s a strong economic reason for Google to burn the kind of capex that the frontier labs are burning. Strategically, I think they’re probably doing better than OpenAI and Anthropic. The Gemini models are open, and they are what researchers are working with (see neuronpedia as an example). Over time, this will…

"The company raised its full-year 2026 capex forecast to between $195 billion and $205 billion, with further significant increases planned for 2027." - Alphabet.

I think ~$200B is just for AI infrastructure capex. Fun fact: that's nearly what the 3rd largest military in the world (Russia) is spending on a land war in Europe.

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

#240

Post by temp_praneshp »

xnx wrote: post #111
baq wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demis will get an offer he can’t refuse - they’ll make him the CEO of Alphabet and have the whole company go all in - the question is when.

How is the company not "all in" now? Google is going to spend $200B on AI buildout this year.

Doesn't mean much for DeepMind if that's spent on Google Cloud, to rent out for Anthropic et al.
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