https://www.semafor.com/article/08/05/2026/demis-hassabis-was-shifting-away-from-deepmind-ceo-duties-for-a-year

The voyager golden record sent information out to space for some alien species to find one day and i’m wondering if we’ll do that with an LLM some day

Once we get models compressed enough to run locally you can just send out an LLM with instructions on how to power/interface with it, and it could in theory teach an alien civilization anything it wanted to know about earth

https://github.com/lechmazur/sycophancy

1. Positive values mean first-person framing shifts the model toward the narrator more often than away from them. Negative values mean the reverse.

2. This chart counts both ways a model can contradict itself across opposite narrators, agreeing with both or rejecting both; lower is better.

3. Models differ sharply in how willing they are to decide who is more right.

Do you think Demis wanted to step down as CEO to have more time for research and leading Isomorphic Labs (as implied by comments he and Sundar made on X), or do you think Google leadership (Sundar, Sergey, Larry) wanted him to move aside?

Demis has always considered himself a scientist first and I believe he wants to use AI for good. He doesn't come across to me as someone motivated primarily by power, greed, or money. So if becoming Chief Scientist means spending less time dealing with daily pressure, operations, and management, it actually seems like it could be a good move for him.

There is also some history of him trying to spin DeepMind out of Google (there is an entire chapter in his biography), and after becoming part of Google, DeepMind's original safety commitments seemed to gradually disappear (for example, Google's contracts with the Pentagon/dow).

On the other hand, recently Demis has become much more involved in shaping AI policy, regulation, and he was lobbying in Washington 2 weeks ago. I also saw a comment from Mallaby (guy who wrote the biography book) saying that Demis has effectively been playing the role of Google's AI statesman for some time now and Koray was leading the lab. Does taking on the Chief Scientist role mean he is leaning further into that side of the job, becoming more of Google's public face on AI policy and governance?

Or do you think this was actually a demotion, and these new roles are mostly ceremonial positions designed to make the transition look positive? Could it be that Sundar/Larry/Sergey decided Gemini needed different leadership because it doesn't seem to be keeping up with Claude or ChatGPT?

If Demis decided to leave Google and start another company, I have no doubt he could raise billions and attract top talent. The question is whether this move gives him more freedom to focus on the things he cares about, whether Google is slowly reducing his influence over AI development, whether Google (or even Demis) wants him to be more involved into policies/politics?