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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

#961

Post by adrian_b »

wasting_time wrote: post #953
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xcancel.com/signulll/status/2067446889956430273

Off-topic, but clicking this link instantly crashes my desktop in both Firefox and Chromium. Debian 13 with backports kernel, AMD laptop graphics. I have never seen anything like it in 20 years of Linux desktop use.

Firefox and Vivaldi browsers on Gentoo, NVIDIA GPU, both work normally with that link.

So it must be something very specific to what software you have installed, unless it is an AMD GPU problem, but neither of the 2 links (x and xcancel) has anything that seems to need special GPU features.

It certainly is not a general Linux problem. I also use XFCE as desktop, so if you use Gnome it could be some Gnome component.

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

#963

Post by anonreplier »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #850
anonreplier wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Google be the only interested buying party?

They wouldn't be the only party, but they are in my opinion the most likely party. What the people that can monetize it? Microsoft, X, IBM, Salesforce, Discord, Google Microsoft would likely buy OpenAI due to their investment and integration with OpenAI. Making Anthropic not that valuable. Google would likely buy Anthropic due to their investment and ties to Anthropic. X, Salesforce maybe. Not sure Discord has the mo…

But there would be enough other interest that they would not be getting bought "for cheap"

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

#964

Post by jodrellblank »

andsoitis wrote: post #308
keeda wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the new cow is cannibalizing the old cow, so Google is in a bit of a bind here. (So far I cannot imagine them monetizing AI overviews enough to compensate for the sharp loss of ads on SERPs.) To its credit Google seems willing to disrupt itself before its competitors can.

One option would be to become vegetarian.

You don't eat the cash cow, you milk the cash cow.

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

#965

Post by FeepingCreature »

Shog9 wrote: post #899
FeepingCreature wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mod you have to delete harmful things. I think the spread of Roko's is entirely due to its own memetic strength as an idea, and the Streisand effect has very little to do with it past the first dozen people who saw it. We also have done nothing to signal-boost the Zizians. :) If we can be accused of anything in this context, it's not kicking bad people out aggressively enough, which seems very different from fos…

> If we can be accused of anything in this context, it's not kicking bad people out aggressively enough, which seems very different from fostering bad ideas. It's not very different. It's barely different at all. Right now, I have five tomato plants growing in my garden. Two of them I planted; the other three grew from seeds left in the ground by tomatoes that dropped from plants growing last year. All I did was refu…

Yes, it's a balancing act. It should be noted that abusers also tend to be very good at painting people dangerous to them as abusers, so it's difficult to start with. Generally speaking you look at a person talking about vegetarianism and decision theory to some other people in a corner, and you don't usually think "this will end in them murdering their landlord with a samurai sword." We at least managed to ban her from the community after the suicides, which was still well before she became famous, and before that I can only say that it's just very hard to notice that you have to ban a person from a community if she's mainly keeping to herself and talking.

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

#966

Post by jodrellblank »

bkaae wrote: post #319
willy_k wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because a significant portion of the work and spending going on at frontier labs is generating new, more curated data, in select domains like software engineering and now biology[1]. [1] https://www.synbiobeta.com/read/anthropic-is-hiring-biologis...

I think that was his argument as well. It looks like there is no more data to find, but then it becomes important to find more data - lo and behold we can make more. Sounds like the oil scare from 90' - we thought we were gonna run out of oil. But as oil gets more expensive it pays to dig further down to find the stuff that didn't make sense to dig up before.

> "it pays to dig further down to find the stuff that didn't make sense to dig up before"

A limited amount; for each barrel burned to power the drilling we used to get 100 barrels back. Now we need to build a floating oil rig, drill kilometers down, build tanker ships and long pipelines, each barrel burned digging for oil gets 20 back. Or 10. With tar sands and fracking, the return is 3 to 5 barrels back.

As that ratio dwindles towards burning one barrel to get one barrel, the oil-based world economy slows, gets more expensive and comes to a halt even if there is more oil down there. (About 50 years of oil left at current world oil extraction rates).

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

#967

Post by jodrellblank »

senderista wrote: post #576
solenoid0937 wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rationalist community, IMHO their methodology of thought leads to much more well-reasoned takes on AI than on HN, where the discussion here is often very emotionally charged or led by wishful thinking. When it comes to AI, LessWrong has been discussing topics for years, that HN has just started to consider, so they are much further along in the philosophical "chain of thought" so to say. LW fully understood an…

Well at least HN hasn't (yet?) spawned a murderous death cult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians

https://aiascendant.com/p/extropias-children

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

#968

Post by mattm »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #504
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing Ive was probably a good thing for Apple. I often feel that after a few years these big guys have done what they could do and somebody else can take it from there. So far even losing Jobs didn’t hurt Apple as it looks.

> Losing Ive was probably a good thing for Apple. The position that I have rather often read on the internet is: Jonathan Ive did very good work at Apple as long as there was a counterpart who could steer his creative vision. This counterpart was of course Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs died, there wasn't such a counterpart anymore, so Ive's work for Apple got much worse.

I think this is true more often than many people want to admit. One of the most famous examples being Lennon and McCartney. Even though they couldn't stand each other near the end that tension helped produce their best music. They never did anything comparable as solo musicians.

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

#969

Post by Obscurity4340 »

atmosx wrote: post #717
adityazero wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sundar, softly: “we can create a permission working group.” so true. i have attended meetings to decide on meeting topics for the next half.

That’s how the Brussels bureaucracy works. There is even a TV series about it.

Name drop please?

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

#970

Post by mattm »

sva_ wrote: post #425
Analemma_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I keep hearing this, but Hassabis did not leave Google/Alphabet. He merely changed from an administrative position to a more technical one.

I've been following Demis a lot over the past year and he's alluded to this in interviews that basically he'd rather be doing research than leading a team. I know a lot of people have tagged him for being the next CEO of Google but he doesn't really want that. This role seems more aligned with what he actually wants to be doing.
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