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taurath | on: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
> 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

HarHarVeryFunny | parent | next
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.
ackbar03 | root | parent | next
I have a feeling this might negatively impact Isomorphic as well since they also fall under Alphabet
HarHarVeryFunny | root | parent
Hopefully not - Isomorphic also have external investors (maybe 10-20% ownership?), who may be willing to buy it outright from Google if they lose interest, and Hassabis is now said to be "leaning into" the role of Isomorphic CEO, which is at least pursuing his goal for scientific advance via AI, if only in one specific (important) direction.

https://endpoints.news/demis-hassabis-leaning-into-isomorphi...

IncreasePosts | root | parent
He won a nobel prize for his work on protein folding while at Google...it seems like they give him a lot of room to explore problems that aren't directly related to serving ads
antupis | root | parent
But it was Google fault that they really cannot productize all that innovation that happened DeepMind. Google probably now fumbled with world models and this exodus will create next giant in that space.
nolist_policy | root | parent
> Google probably now fumbled with world models [...].

Can you explain this more precisely?

WarmWash | parent | next
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.
michaelt | root | parent | next
> The amount they are spending on Gemini is probably shockingly low

IDK, haven't Google been putting Gemini front and centre in pretty much all of their products?

I'm seeing Gemini on my slide decks, Gemini on my e-mails, Gemini on my searches, Gemini on my videoconferences, Gemini on my database query console. My impression was they were doing a Google Plus style attempt to marshal all the company's efforts behind one product.

WarmWash | root | parent
Their capex is primarily in building DCs (and what goes into them), which they fully intend to monetize in order to capture that $500B backlog. In that context, the amount of new capacity that will be given to Deepmind could be surprisingly small, since the ROI of selling pickaxes rather than mining gold is so much better right now.
mikert89 | root | parent | next
I’ve heard the pay at deep mind is low and people are complaining about it
bmitc | root | parent
How low are we talking?
mikert89 | root | parent
Nowhere near what other ai labs are paying. Most deep mind employees make what typical Google employees make
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dnnehgf | root | parent
this is roughly how i've been reading their approach, but i wonder when/if this changes. what actually makes them start caring about having the most capable model? maybe nothing. i suppose they could be happy in a world where they (a) are still the agents' preferred search index and (b) own or produce a good percentage of the hardware that anthropic and openai run on.
weatherlite | root | parent
> i suppose they could be happy in a world where they (a) are still the agents' preferred search index and (b) own or produce a good percentage of the hardware that anthropic and openai run on.

If the goal is to maximize share price (which it is) this is probably the safest approach. Why do they have to keep chasing developing the best model when they can

a) charge everyone for the cloud infra

b) have a "good enough" experience for normal consumers

Their current setup will be worth trillions. Already is. Let anthropic get paid for the most expensive queries while they get a bill from Google for their cloud/TPU use. GCP grew 82% YOY with 24B revenue and improving margins. So GCP became a 100B business. Anyone doubts it's gonna double in less than 5 years? Gemini just needs to be good enough for normal folks who want personal agents for everyday use. I don't think Google has to compete with Anthropic on making the best agentic programming model.

kridsdale1 | parent | next
Same thing happened to Yan LeCun.

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

HarHarVeryFunny | parent
> 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.