alt Hacker NewsSome context for people who haven’t followed the full loop: Shazeer was a long-time Google researcher, joined Google in 2000, and was one of the co-authors of “Attention Is All You Need.”
He left Google in 2021 to co-found Character.AI. In 2024, Google brought him and some Character.AI researchers back via a licensing/talent deal with Character.AI (reportedly around $2.7B). He was then made a Gemini co-lead.
Now he’s leaving Google again for OpenAI.
Exciting times!
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I first saw Noam on Dwarkesh’s podcast together with Jeff Dean. Recommend if you want a taste of what’s Google’s folks take on things.
At this point is it even pay that’s tempting or is it more about what they get to do? I would assume Google could easily pay them what openAI can, unless as an older company it’s harder for Google to match something really out there
Hopefully will get to the conclusion that "Hopfield Networks is All You Need"
this character.ai? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3xgwyywe4o
For context, the reason he left Google the first time was because Google wouldn't ship the chatbot-type products that he saw were possible.
Google bought him back (with lots of money) and made him one of the leads of Gemini.