[HN Gopher] A pair of DeepMind scientists talking with investors...
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A pair of DeepMind scientists talking with investors about forming
an AI startup
Author : geox
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-01-19 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| BXlnt2EachOther wrote:
| from the article, the scientists are Laurent Sifre and Karl
| Tuyls.
|
| edit to add: the source for this is "people familiar with the
| matter"
| gumballindie wrote:
| In France. Seems like the UK has become completely irrelevant.
| Well done!
|
| On a serious note, they should leave Google. That company is on a
| steady decline, as seen in their products.
| paxys wrote:
| This is Google's constant struggle in the AI space. They can hire
| the best talent and give them exorbitant salaries, but by virtue
| of already being a $2T company their stock price is simply not
| going to make a 100x jump no matter what they produce. Even if an
| AI researcher at the company doesn't care about power or
| independence or anything of that sort, just from a financial
| perspective it makes a lot more sense for them to join a startup
| or found their own. Just look at how many of the authors of all
| the seminal AI papers from Google Brain are still at the company.
| If you are a top mind in the AI space why would you want to share
| the spoils of your work equally with 200K other Google employees?
|
| In order to have a fighting chance Google needs to spin off their
| AI efforts and issue stock independent of $GOOG.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Why doesn't GOOG spin them off?
|
| Now that I think about it, it seems this might be precisely
| what's occurring. It's possible the approach involves the
| Scientists "independently" seeking funding, resulting in their
| Director being sidelined, while the upper echelons of
| leadership have the opportunity to invest in the start-up. The
| same leadership that initiated the oppertunity.
|
| Anyway, all hypothetical but this is what I'd do.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I don't think that's google's problem. Smart talented people
| are usually more concerned with things like pace of work,
| culture, freedom to do what they want to do, impact, etc.
| Working in a large company is absolutely stifling.
|
| Google has all the top talent and was caught flat footed by
| smaller, nimbler organizations.
| paxys wrote:
| Google Brain clearly had the culture over the last decade and
| a half that resulted in basically 100% of the AI
| breakthroughs we are seeing today, and all the top minds in
| the field had no problem working there. What changed in the
| span of a couple years? Only that the tech became production-
| ready and the rest of the world took notice, and these
| researchers and engineers decided that they no longer needed
| Google's money since there was so much available from
| everywhere else. This is what directly led to the founding of
| OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Adept and probably hundreds of
| other small to mid sized AI startups. There isn't really
| anything in terms of cultural or organization changes that
| Google could have done to prevent this.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| > There isn't really anything in terms of cultural or
| organization changes that Google could have done to prevent
| this.
|
| If you're familiar with the political infighting between
| Brain, Deepmind, and subteams within Brain, you'd know
| there was a lot of room for improvement.
|
| Also Google would benefit from being able to use and build
| off more open source stuff. Tensorflow losing to Torch for
| researchers was a pretty big blow imo.
|
| Macro cultural trends at Google didn't help either. Stuff
| like not incentivizing work with longer term payoffs, and
| too many layers of middle management.
|
| > Only that the tech became production-ready and the rest
| of the world took notice, and these researchers and
| engineers decided that they no longer needed Google's money
| since there was so much available from everyone else.
|
| All that said this is very true and probably unavoidable.
| Mechanical9 wrote:
| There have been significant changes in culture and (at
| least perceived) job stability in the past two years
| specifically. See the significant layoffs in early 2023 and
| the surprising and completely unnecessary layoffs that just
| happened a week ago. Transparency about decision-making is
| now basically non-existent. The literal only communication
| from the CEO was that there will be more layoffs.
|
| Travel budgets are also non-existent now.
|
| All in all, it's still a good job. But it is significantly
| worse that before, and the trajectory does not seem great.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > In order to have a fighting chance Google needs to spin off
| their AI efforts and issue stock independent of $GOOG.
|
| deepmind was kinda independent for many years burning billions
| of dollars. Now they put them on payroll as other employees.
| juujian wrote:
| Good for them.
| surfingdino wrote:
| The EU is not exactly the place where tech unicorns come from.
| Could it be France's gamble on becoming an independent AI power,
| just like they did with advanced weapons and nuclear energy?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Just because it's not happening in the Anglo-sphere doesn't
| mean its not happening. France always has been a tech giant,
| both in traditional hard tech and computer technology. They had
| something like the web before the web for example.
|
| Also, notice how many big names in the AI field have funny
| accents and non-American names. Maybe startups go to the USA to
| become Unicorns but a lot is happening in Europe, especially in
| talent.
|
| I recall listening to Mistral CEO, who also happens to be
| French, explaining that UK, France and Poland are very good at
| training mathematicians and as a result they happen to have
| access to a good talent pool in EU. He also said that many
| people don't want to go to the US because of the food, safety
| and other aspect that make EU nice place to be at.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Can't wait till they fire each other and make nice and build our
| AI overlords
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/GOgIf
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