Both are very smart.
But Jeff was responsible for a lot more of what is actually used today than Demis.
Demis is responsible for a lot more of the hype though ;)
I think saying Jeff's contributions were a long time ago must represent some kind of lack of understanding of Jeff's recent contributions.
Jeff has still been focused more on infrastructure, and that is just more hidden most of the time.
I would say,if i was forced to pick someone whose vision to follow, it would definitely be Jeff and not Demis, even today.
Agree. Demis is very smart, but obviously less humble and more interested in self-promotion. There have been multiple Deepmind documentaries that mythologize the Demis origin story.
Not sure it's being less humble so much as the story being interesting for the public - chess wizz and game developer out to solve intelligence, makes AlphaGo tha beats humans at go, AlphaFold that gets the nobel prize. With Jeff Dean developing Bigtable and Spanner, no general public know what those are.