Thread

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

810 points · 862 comments · colesantiago

atleastoptimal · 1785947160 · focus · HN ↗
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 who truly believe in the economically transformative power of AI to work at Google since their benefits will be capped by Google being large + having public company obligations.
1. xnx · 1785948417 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. ddp26 · 1785955725 · focus · HN ↗
    Would it though? Meta and Microsoft have had very scandalous AI things happen, and their shares didn't tank (or quickly recovered)

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