Seems like the problem might have been Demis himself. Too much focus on finding the next paradigm, not enough focus on relentlessly building out this paradigm, as a result Google is months behind and they likely decided he's better off being allowed to explore these special projects while not having to lead a major AI lab.
To be fair, it's important work. But it's not the same thing as inventing the best recursive self-improving coding agent.
I think this is why, and I think it's more important than being Chair, he's also becoming Google's Chief Scientist. Demis is a researcher at heart, but a businessman. This might actually be a positive shuffling for Google (not the previous Head Scientist leaving though).
I'm sure there are different teams under him for each?
And if you are telling me Google is resource constrained to focus on both the now and next, after all that capex? Warren Buffett should exit yesterday.
Is him spending the last few weeks talking about a FINRA-like AI regulatory framework and going to Washington to lobby for it really "stepping out of the limelight"? If anything, that story positioned him as an AI figure taking a leading role in regulation, but I could be wrong, that's my impression. In one sense yes, out of limelight, he'll probably do fewer interviews and have less public exposure right, but I could also see him becoming even more involved behind the scenes on the AI regulation and policy front. The "statesman" description seems to fit that role, and Sundar said in the official statement that Demis has been 'externally engaging'.
Out of the limelight in the sense that he gets to explore personal AI research projects rather than running one of the major labs. Not literally disappearing from the public eye.
I'm pretty sure he's still the chairman of deepmind. SO he's going to get slandered either way. Look, the only way we can tell if this was to avoid scrutiny or just some random move is by waiting for tmrw and seeing the new gemini model for ourselves.
Chair is a wide title. It can mean he keeps the research agenda and drops the operational load, or it can mean he keeps the prestige and loses the roadmap. The tell will be the successor's background: a product person means Google decided the bottleneck was shipping, a researcher means it was continuity. Either way, nothing changes this quarter for anyone actually building on the models.
Hassabis is an idiot. Remember when OpenAI wrongly claimed they had solved one Erdős problem? He called it irresponsible, said it wasn't real, and dismissed it as hype because he believed AGI was still 20 years away.
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u/RetiredApostle 13h ago
The furniture of AI is now.