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Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

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Re: Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the changes?

First was the elimination of TGIF, a weekly meeting where Larry and Sergei would come out in the flesh and answer some of the most politically sensitive questions you could imagine right there at 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, second was the rule of CFO Ruth Porat who eliminated many bets and turned Google into a lean mean ad selling machine. Sundar Pichai seemed too distant or disinterested to fully engage with Googlers or…

As a general rule of thumb, any publicly-traded company of sufficient size becomes beholden to shareholders and shareholders only, out of necessity.

That's why I inmediately grow suspicious of any mid-to-large sized enterprise that goes public. They all deserve to be looked at with wary eyes.

Re: Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

#22

Google was never the same after Sergey left. With him, all employees, execs, investors shared the original credos of organizing the world's information. And after him, it became like any corporation, with everyone seeking to gain as much personal wealth as they could. The dream was dead. I saw this firsthand.

When do you think Sergey left? Wikipedia says he was president of alphabet until 2019, but I feel like he was sort of an absentee leader for years before that. Eric Schmidt was CEO until 2011. Larry Page was CEO until 2015 when Sundar became CEO and Ruth Porat became CFO. To me, these felt like more significant changes, but honestly everything was probably very gradual.

Re: Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

#23

the first niche research paper I found looking recently, on a niche topic.. was "AI for reading research papers" that looked for nouns associated with this niche, and then the context, and did that for thousands of publications. That writeup was released publicly in 2018. If you think a founder of Google does not have tools like that on Day0, you might be in for some surprises in a year.

Are they able to convert research papers to HTML yet?

html to a nice printable pdf is harder, btw.

Re: Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the changes?

First was the elimination of TGIF, a weekly meeting where Larry and Sergei would come out in the flesh and answer some of the most politically sensitive questions you could imagine right there at 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, second was the rule of CFO Ruth Porat who eliminated many bets and turned Google into a lean mean ad selling machine. Sundar Pichai seemed too distant or disinterested to fully engage with Googlers or…

[deleted]

Re: Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

#26

This does make for good media, but does anyone believe that adding one more cook to the kitchen at Google is going to measurably change their trajectory in this area?

One more cook with god mode access, yes. Imagine driving through a city and all the lights turning green. Agility at large companies is hampered by middle management and a fast pass helps.

Re: Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to work on AI

#27
post #25
post #13

This link (for me anyway) doesn't cause the loop like the other one: https://archive.is/rRVo4

This is the same link.

Well it did work yesterday, but for some reason today, it's doing the same loop when you click 'i am not a robot' sigh
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