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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In retrospect this is very similar to the Apple strategy: don’t invest heavily in doing something that isn’t already a core competency, position for novel uses of the tech but don’t build it per se. Apple probably would have benefitted in the last 4 quarters from hyping a custom model stack but it doesn’t seem that this strategy paid off to even close to 20% ROI while Apple got to hold their cash and organizational f…

> don’t invest heavily in doing something that isn’t already a core competency

“Heavily” it’s a high bar at their scale. They spent over $10bn playing with cars.

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

#332

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.

2023: Google is doomed. They're not building AI. No wonder the "Attention" authors left. Google just sat on this. Their PMs are steering them into oblivion. OpenAI is winning while Google takes no risks. Innovator's dilemma. Google Search is doomed. 2024: Google is on fire. Sergey coming back helped. Gemini, Veo. They've caught up. OpenAI is doomed. 2025: Google is seriously winning now. Nano Banana!! Google was dest…

>Meanwhile, Microsoft: "Copilot!"

The difference is nobody expects anything better from Microsoft. Teams didn't exactly set the bar high.

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

#333

Just some random tidbit: When I was in high school I bought every computer gaming magazine I could get my hands on and could afford with my allowance. So when Deepmind first made headlines I recalled an article in the UK magazine, Edge, which had an article about a game called Republic being developed by a team of former Bullfrog employees lead by one Demis Hassabis. Out of interest, I just checked Internet Archive,…

It is a bit of a tagent but still--Theme Park was dope. I was too young to grasp the compete with other businesses (stocks and shares?) level but still had a lot of fun building parks.

Instant nostalgia: https://youtu.be/tQJJ_rhHxIk?si=V8pOVwj3gYkw0xKB&t=188

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

#334
post #64

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.

Yeah, a bit surprised that the top comments aren't discussing losing Dean, he's been a figurehead for the company for decades. It's like Apple losing Ive in a way.

EDIT: "figurehead" - that's all I meant. A notable, public figure from the company who is credited with having a significant impact on its evolution. I'm not making a judgement call on his departure, or Ive's, being good or bad.

That said... just give it a couple years, they'll be back in a lucrative aquihire.

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

#335

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.

Google was always at the frontier of real research, but has been abysmal at shipping good products (at least since Sundar). The core company is run for margins and interest rates by the business people nowadays.

So they are fixing this by letting go of the people who were best at the research side, and therefore will have no problem converting "nothing" into products anymore!

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

#336

Just some random tidbit: When I was in high school I bought every computer gaming magazine I could get my hands on and could afford with my allowance. So when Deepmind first made headlines I recalled an article in the UK magazine, Edge, which had an article about a game called Republic being developed by a team of former Bullfrog employees lead by one Demis Hassabis. Out of interest, I just checked Internet Archive,…

I always assumed Demis' ultimate secret motivation behind his work was the desire to deliver a version of Black and White that actually lived up to the hype

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

#337

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.

Both are very smart.

But Jeff was responsible for a lot more of what is actually used today than Demis.

Demis is responsible for a lot more of the hype though ;)

I think saying Jeff's contributions were a long time ago must represent some kind of lack of understanding of Jeff's recent contributions.

Jeff has still been focused more on infrastructure, and that is just more hidden most of the time.

I would say,if i was forced to pick someone whose vision to follow, it would definitely be Jeff and not Demis, even today.

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

#338
post #95

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.

Would it though? Meta and Microsoft have had very scandalous AI things happen, and their shares didn't tank (or quickly recovered)

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

#339

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?

> If Demis Hassabis got a Nobel prize for being a Project Manager

His accomplishments are far beyond project manager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis

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