Thread

1. ra7 · 1785947940 · focus · HN ↗

   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.

   1. HarHarVeryFunny · 1785960760 · focus · HN ↗

      It seems there's a big shake up on the underperforming Gemini side. Before there was Shazeer (already gone) and Vinyals as co-leads, reporting to Hassabis, now Gemini comes under Kavukcuoglu reporting direct to Pichai as SVP of DeepMind.

      Hassabis seems to have been pushed aside. He had been CEO of DeepMind, but that position no longer exists and it seems Kavukcuoglu is now leading DeepMind with a title of SVP. Hassabis is now just "Chair" of DeepMind, and has been given the newly created title of Alphabet Chief Scientist. Are these just face-saving titles, or does he still have any real influence over Google/DeepMind's pursuit of AGI?

      Shane Legg remains as DeepMind "Chief AGI Scientist", but I wonder if the DeepMind founding mission of creating AGI is really intact, or if he will be next to go. Has DeepMind just become the Gemini division?

      I just found out that David Silver, DeepMind's RL-expert, already left in february, to create a startup "Ineffible Intelligence" focusing on RL-based continual learning.

      1. taurath · 1785961098 · focus · HN ↗

         > Hassabis seems to have been pushed aside.

         Yeah he seemed too reasonable to me, relative to the fervor. Whoever ends up in charge needs to do a lot of frothing to catch up to the ferver that would justify their valuations and investments

         1. HarHarVeryFunny · 1785962852 · focus · HN ↗

            Probably not going to happen, but I'd love to see Isomorphic Labs separate from Alphabet with Hassabis still as CEO. He's too pure minded to be at company like Google.
         2. kridsdale1 · 1785964872 · focus · HN ↗

            Same thing happened to Yan LeCun.

            Real scientists are skeptical. Wall St and the people who serve it don’t like that.

         3. WarmWash · 1785965643 · focus · HN ↗

            Google's capex is to capture the compute purchases from the other labs. The amount they are spending on Gemini is probably shockingly low...and hence researchers leaving for better watered pastures.
         4. HarHarVeryFunny · 1785970544 · focus · HN ↗

            > Whoever ends up in charge needs to do a lot of frothing

            I don't get the impression from interviews that Kavukcuoglu is that guy - he seems like a safe pair of hands, but not someone that is on a mission.

            OTOH I don't even think this is the right race to be in.

      2. moscoe · 1785965576 · focus · HN ↗

         I guess his big bet on world models didn’t pay off quickly enough

         1. justanotherjoe · 1786020221 · focus · HN ↗

            I think it's more than that. I made prediction in earlier 2024 that the main players of AI will stick with transformers while second class players will want to transcend it. The difference is admittedly a bit subtle but ai researchers would get it. I wrote it with mamba in mind back then, but google was still trying to come up with the 'next transformers' and one that can remember using weights and all that stuffs. You can say the same abt lecun's and ilya's now.

            My main reasoning was that transformers was the lightning in a bottle and the best work is in extending it instead of transcending it, which requires you to capture another lightning . Which to me appears to miss the assignment. OpenAI, Antrophic, they understand this intimately. Google on the other hand, fell victim to their own ambition.

      3. Cidan · 1785972249 · focus · HN ↗

         CEO of <thing> at Google (not Alphabet) was always an informal title. There is no CEO of Cloud, CEO of YouTube, or CEO of DeepMind within Google internally -- it's always been an SVP role.

         1. kfse · 1785986028 · focus · HN ↗

            Kamangar, Wojcicki, Mohan were all CEOs of YouTube
         2. ErikCorry · 1785986333 · focus · HN ↗

            ?? Of course there's a CEO of YouTube.
         3. cbarrick · 1785990875 · focus · HN ↗

            TK has the formal title of CEO of Cloud.

            CEO of <thing> is a layer above SVP.

            Google has many layers of management.

      4. Keyframe · 1785976519 · focus · HN ↗

         Inevitably, this will lead to Sundar Pichai replacement. I see nothing less. The sooner the better. I can't even tell what Google's focus is, is there any even?

         1. ulfw · 1785993419 · focus · HN ↗

            Google? Focus? Huh? Focus would be the last word that comes to mind. Honestly, ever.
      5. weatherlite · 1786003644 · focus · HN ↗

         > and has been given the newly created title of Alphabet Chief Scientist. Are these just face-saving titles, or does he still have any real influence over Google/DeepMind's pursuit of AGI?

         Alphabet Chief Scientist doesnt sound like a demotion / lack of influence to me but who knows. We're all just speculating here.

      6. _the_inflator · 1786013567 · focus · HN ↗

         Roughly two years ago suddenly Hassabis was heavily promoted on all Google YouTube channels.

         It was to fight ChatGPT and promote Gemini.

         I think the guy does a very poor job or is simply not the right guy to appear as public figure for Gemini.

         At least he tried. He is a man for everything that is not filmed.

         Google doesn’t really have a person to give Gemini or AI a human face. And that is only consequential because Google never had any public person with any charisma like Jobs, Zuck, Altman.

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