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

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251–260 of 988 posts

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Single data point; no, I don't. I preferred the pre-AI world. It makes me sad that we'll never see it again.

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

#252

Google loves to kick senior execs upstairs. Whatever happened to Prabhakar Raghavan? Got kicked upstairs and we barely hear from him nowadays. It's only a matter of time before Demis leaves and joins Anthropic or OpenAI.

As what? CEO? Demis will not take up the MTS role.

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

#253

No AGI on the horizon and that ROI horizon approaching fast is going to make Ed Zitron a superstar. If Demis Hassabis got a Nobel prize for being a Project Manager, is Zitron up for the Nobel on Economy for excellence in economic forecast?

Ed Zitron has predicted 16 of the last 0 AI bubble bursts... But more seriously, this has to do with DeepMind falling way behind the frontier in intelligence and cost per task. There's basically no reason to use a Gemini model today.

Tbf, he only has to get it right once.

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

#254
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…

[deleted]

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

For what? There are some things I want AI for because it does it well. There are some things I don't want AI for because it just makes a mess (hallucinations). Maybe the next AI will be different and we will have the conversation again.

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

#256
post #243
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it _that_ Jeff Dean? https://github.com/LRitzdorf/TheJeffDeanFacts

> When Jeff Dean goes on vacation, production services across Google mysteriously stop working within a few days. This is actually true. (TRUE) Uh oh...

Basically, he had a server that did code indexing running on his workstation. If he didn't login and run a command to refresh his prod credentials every day, the server would lose its ability to talk to prod (as it should) and fail. Much of the company depended on that service. Eventually it was moved to prod.

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

#257
Real next chapters:

1) Repair search that had been broken by AI initiatives.

2) Include less invasive AI with ads for those that need to be spoon fed.

3) Pretend to work on AGI and data centers in space.

4) Sell shovels and TPUs to the gold diggers.

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

#258
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…

For at least a year now the standard reflexive reply to “Google seems way behind OAI and Anthropic” has been “it’ll be ok, they’ve got Dean and Hassabis.” And now they don’t. What reason is there to be bullish about Google now?

As much as everyone wants to pay accomplished celebrities, all of these companies have young nameless geniuses that are about to make one for themselves. A guard passing torch can be opportunity.

Now, whether Google is the right environment to nurture, that’s its own quandary.

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

#259

No AGI on the horizon and that ROI horizon approaching fast is going to make Ed Zitron a superstar. If Demis Hassabis got a Nobel prize for being a Project Manager, is Zitron up for the Nobel on Economy for excellence in economic forecast?

Superstar? This Ed Zitron?

"Based on estimates of their burn rate and historic analyses, I hypothesize that OpenAI will collapse in the next 12-24 months unless it raises more funding than in the history of the valley and creates an entirely new form of AI."

-July 29, 2024

https://x.com/edzitron/status/1817955630784917548

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

#260

Demis stepped down? Who cares? Jeff and Sanjay are leaving Google. We are in uncharted territory.

I think Demis has been way more influential in the past decade. Jeff and Sanjay built a lot of Google's foundational software, but that was a long time ago.

Demis is great -- this is not a zero-sum game. Who built what, and the relative importance, is an interesting discussion to have, but it's orthogonal to my point.

Which is: When you think about Google, true, old, "don't be evil", tech excellence Google, you don't think about Demis. You think about Jeff's and Sanjay's geeky, technically uncompromising, faces.

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