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Francois Chollet is leaving Google

developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#51

Post by V1ndaar »

hooloovoo_zoo wrote: post #41
osm3000 wrote: post #31

I loved Keras at the beginning of my PhD, 2017. But it was just the wrong abstraction: too easy to start with, too difficult to create custom things (e.g., custom loss function). I really tried to understand TensorFlow, I managed to make a for-loop in a week. Nested for-loop proved to be impossible. PyTorch was just perfect out of the box. I don't think I would have finished my PhD in time if it wasn't for PyTorch. I…

Keras was a miracle coming from writing stuff in Theano back in the day though.

I didn't realize Keras was actually released before Tensorflow, huh. I used Theano quite a bit in 2014 and early 2015, but then went a couple years without any ML work. Compared to the modern libraries Theano is clunky, but it taught one a bit more about the models, heh.

Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#52

Post by kortilla »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #47
crystal_revenge wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, in my experience, is a place where smart people go to retire. I have many brilliant friends who work there, but all of them have essentially stopped producing interesting work since the day they started. They all seem happy and comfortable, but not ambitious. I'm sure the pay is great, but it's not a place for smart people who are interested in doing something . I've followed Francois (and had the chance to c…

I wonder how/if that mentality will shift over time. As it seems the market capture phase it over and the current big tech aren't simply keeping top talent around as a capture piece anymore. Maybe they'll still do it, but basically only if it feels you can startup a billion dollar business. As opposed to a million dollar one.

Not really any different than what happened to IBM, Intel, Cisco, etc.

The people that want to build great things want the potential huge reward too, so they go to a startup to do it.

Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#53

Post by blaufuchs »

hooloovoo_zoo wrote: post #41
osm3000 wrote: post #31

I loved Keras at the beginning of my PhD, 2017. But it was just the wrong abstraction: too easy to start with, too difficult to create custom things (e.g., custom loss function). I really tried to understand TensorFlow, I managed to make a for-loop in a week. Nested for-loop proved to be impossible. PyTorch was just perfect out of the box. I don't think I would have finished my PhD in time if it wasn't for PyTorch. I…

Keras was a miracle coming from writing stuff in Theano back in the day though.

Wow that gives me flashbacks to learning Theano/Lasagne, which was a breath of fresh air coming from Caffe. Crazy how far we've come since then.

Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#55

Post by azinman2 »

kortilla wrote: post #52
johnnyanmac wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how/if that mentality will shift over time. As it seems the market capture phase it over and the current big tech aren't simply keeping top talent around as a capture piece anymore. Maybe they'll still do it, but basically only if it feels you can startup a billion dollar business. As opposed to a million dollar one.

Not really any different than what happened to IBM, Intel, Cisco, etc. The people that want to build great things want the potential huge reward too, so they go to a startup to do it.

Except… it’s about leverage/impact factor. Google has very large impact, so if you do something big and central you’re instantly in the hands of hundreds of millions / billions of people. That’s a very different situation than IBM or Cisco.

Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#57

Post by zxexz »

hiddencost wrote: post #42
paxys wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More generally, there is unlimited opportunity in the AI space today, especially for someone of his stature, and staying tied to Google probably isn't as enticing. He can walk into any VC office and raise a hundred million dollars by the end of the day to build whatever he wants.

$100M isn't enough capital for an AI startup that's training foundation models, sadly. A ton of folks of similar stature who raised that much burnt it within two years and took mediocre exits.

Interesting, I think $100M is totally enough to train a SotA "foundation model". It's all in the use case. I'd love to hear explicit arguments against this.

Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#58

Post by kristopolous »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #44
geor9e wrote: post #19

If I were to speculate, I would guess he quit Google. 2 days ago, his $1+ million Artificial General Intelligence competition ended. Chollet is now judging the submissions and will announce the winners in a few weeks. The timing there can't be a coincidence.

Google, in my experience, is a place where smart people go to retire. I have many brilliant friends who work there, but all of them have essentially stopped producing interesting work since the day they started. They all seem happy and comfortable, but not ambitious. I'm sure the pay is great, but it's not a place for smart people who are interested in doing something . I've followed Francois (and had the chance to c…

Am I almost alone in having no interest working for a large firm like Google?

I've been in tech since the 90s. The only reason I'd go is to network and build a team to do a mass exodus with and that's literally it.

I don't actually care about working on a product I have exactly zero executive control over.

Re: Francois Chollet is leaving Google

#60

Post by lazystar »

dmafreezone wrote: post #48
crystal_revenge wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, in my experience, is a place where smart people go to retire. I have many brilliant friends who work there, but all of them have essentially stopped producing interesting work since the day they started. They all seem happy and comfortable, but not ambitious. I'm sure the pay is great, but it's not a place for smart people who are interested in doing something . I've followed Francois (and had the chance to c…

It’s the other way around. Working at Google (or any other FAANG) for a time period past your personal “bullshit limit” will ensure you will never do anything ambitious with your life ever again.

ambitious? man, i can barely pay rent and i work at a FAANG.
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