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I always find this sort of news confusing and completely lacking in context. I gather this person was a high level manager, but presumably he was part of a very

I always find this sort of news confusing and completely lacking in context. I gather this person was a high level manager, but presumably he was part of a very large team. So will this have a material impact on Google? On AI research in general? Or is this just news because it’s Google and that team has been in the news a lot lately. I honestly can’t tell and I feel like I’m the only one who is confused but reflecting on it, this seems unlikely.

ejb999 6y ago
nobody, and I mean nobody, is irreplaceable. anyone that thinks they are should see what actually happens in the hours and days after 'irreplaceable' people leave...somehow organizations manage to move forward. and within a week or two they are forgotten (with the possible exception of tiny teams).
- rurban 6y ago
  You have apparently no idea how certain fields work. There are a lot of cases where a person stopped working on something, and then followed a 20 year complete stop of progress. Exceptional people are not replaceable. Putting a team in charge will just increase the damage.
- lukevp 6y ago
  I don’t think this is true, but I also don’t think most of us are irreplaceable. For example, Jim Keller seems to make or break chip design projects.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  You're thinking of people who think they are irreplaceable due to general intelligence. People who are unique due to knowledge of specific systems are much less easy to swap out. Money can buy general intelligence but specific domain/application knowledge is sometimes unavailable at any price.
  - neatze 6y ago
    "specific domain/application knowledge", in addition to, passion with deep understanding of project plans (vision) and objectives.
- bo1024 6y ago
  I am reminded of the guy who noticed a nest of termites in one of his house's support beams and said, unworried, "No beam is irreplaceable."
Barrin92 6y ago
he's the cofounder of Google Brain and one of the original torch library authors, also brother of Yoshua Bengio.

ejb999 6y ago

nobody, and I mean nobody, is irreplaceable. anyone that thinks they are should see what actually happens in the hours and days after 'irreplaceable' people leave...somehow organizations manage to move forward. and within a week or two they are forgotten (with the possible exception of tiny teams).

rurban 6y ago
You have apparently no idea how certain fields work. There are a lot of cases where a person stopped working on something, and then followed a 20 year complete stop of progress. Exceptional people are not replaceable. Putting a team in charge will just increase the damage.
lukevp 6y ago
I don’t think this is true, but I also don’t think most of us are irreplaceable. For example, Jim Keller seems to make or break chip design projects.
whatshisface 6y ago
You're thinking of people who think they are irreplaceable due to general intelligence. People who are unique due to knowledge of specific systems are much less easy to swap out. Money can buy general intelligence but specific domain/application knowledge is sometimes unavailable at any price.
- neatze 6y ago
  "specific domain/application knowledge", in addition to, passion with deep understanding of project plans (vision) and objectives.
bo1024 6y ago
I am reminded of the guy who noticed a nest of termites in one of his house's support beams and said, unworried, "No beam is irreplaceable."

Barrin92 6y ago

he's the cofounder of Google Brain and one of the original torch library authors, also brother of Yoshua Bengio.