Thread

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

810 points · 862 comments · colesantiago

GodelNumbering · 1785950655 · focus · HN ↗
So, in last several months, all the prominent names Google lost: Demis Hassabis (technically still with google but these things are usually presented with a spin), Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le, Noam Shazeer, John Jumper, Jonas Adler, Alexander Pritzel, David Silver, Denny Zhou, Fernando Pereira, Alex Turner
And all the prominent names Google gained: NULL
Combined with no gemini frontier GA release in about 14 months. You have to have created an environment pretty hostile to innovation for this to happen
1. hintymad · 1785968534 · focus · HN ↗
  This funny post reads surreal, but it may carry some truth: <a href="https://x.com/signulll/status/2067446889956430273?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/signulll/status/2067446889956430273?lang=en
  1. JumpCrisscross · 1785973460 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://xcancel.com/signulll/status/2067446889956430273" rel="nofollow">https://xcancel.com/signulll/status/2067446889956430273
    snthpy · 1785992797 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, but now we have AI to summarize tweets.
    yyaakkqq · 1785999528 · focus · HN ↗
    I wish their deep tech teams moved as fast as the privacy violating ones.
    bjackman · 1786009966 · focus · HN ↗
    this prompted me to search and find: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xcancel/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xcancel/
    ChuckMcM · 1786037776 · focus · HN ↗
    In my opinion it carries much truth. Somewhere in Google's archives there is a message I sent to the OC that said, "The department of philosophy does not ship solutions to real problems, that is why there has never been a successful company that insisted the world adapt to its philosophy." Google was, even then, blind to what they were missing.
  2. adityazero · 1785976637 · focus · HN ↗
    > sundar, softly: “we can create a permission working group.”
    so true. i have attended meetings to decide on meeting topics for the next half.
    atmosx · 1786004317 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s how the Brussels bureaucracy works. There is even a TV series about it.
    Bendy · 1786009432 · focus · HN ↗
    Reminded me of a bit from the GOAT political comedy Yes, Prime Minister:
    "But he's the Prime Minister!"
    "Indeed he is Bernard. He has his own car, a nice house in London, a place in the country, endless publicity and a pension for life. What more does he want?"
    "I think he wants to govern Britain."
    "Well stop him, Bernard!"
    titanomachy · 1786046732 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh man, that show has some amazing writing.
    "Tobacco-related diseases cost the NHS £150 million per year!"
    "Yes we've looked into that, it turns out that if those people had survived they would have cost us billions in pensions and healthcare costs! From a financial perspective, it's vastly preferable that they continue to die at the current rate."
    imglorp · 1786023951 · focus · HN ↗
    At $work, r&d once had a retreat with a consultant to discuss why our productivity was too low per some spreadsheet. The consultant was told how everyone is in meetings all day so we all stole time from our families at night to get any work done at all. :(
  3. utopcell · 1785977920 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember a time when a tweet was 140 characters.
    jorisw · 1785994621 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember GemTOS
    ethbr1 · 1786012383 · focus · HN ↗
    140 characters was likely more efficient, in terms of forcing people to focus their thoughts.
    But it was unpopular, in that people don't like mental effort.
  4. trueno · 1785981138 · focus · HN ↗
    lmao that's actually so good
  5. nunez · 1785984049 · focus · HN ↗
    Nice post, but this reads as the Google of yesterday and the OpenAI of some near-distant future.
  6. throw-the-towel · 1785984096 · focus · HN ↗
    This is so good, it gave me flashbacks.
  7. dnchdnd · 1785985702 · focus · HN ↗
    So believable until the last line, alas Gemini being this useful is completely implausible.
  8. deepsun · 1785986003 · focus · HN ↗
    Regardless of how much I hate Musk, he did a great job of firing 80% of Twitter staff.
  9. neutralx · 1786002741 · focus · HN ↗
    I can see this as a screenplay for one of the KRAZAM[0] videos.
    [0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@KRAZAM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@KRAZAM
  10. atmosx · 1786004216 · focus · HN ↗
    Pure gold, lol.
  11. _the_inflator · 1786013099 · focus · HN ↗
    You made my day. As tragic as it reads, it is on point.
  12. jpcompartir · 1786025568 · focus · HN ↗
    I can't be the only person who never finds these made up dialogues funny, right?
  13. chaostheory · 1786026666 · focus · HN ↗
    Mike Judge needs to do another Silicon Valley series on HBO
  14. devy · 1786029022 · focus · HN ↗
    Did Gemini created this Silicon Valley TV show episode script? Makes so much sense...
  15. newswasboring · 1786038231 · focus · HN ↗
    Best thing I read all day. I also work in a multi billion dollar enterprise and man this is so relatable it hurts.

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