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Deepmind shouldn’t be part of a for profit entity. There I said it. They are clearly focused on moving technology forward and helping humanity. That’s great. H

Deepmind shouldn’t be part of a for profit entity. There I said it. They are clearly focused on moving technology forward and helping humanity. That’s great. However, pulling down 1M+ salaries (for L6+ developers) and using hundreds of millions or billions in borg resources while adding nothing to the bottom line is not in the interest of Google. Not to mention the negative effects on productivity as other Googlers attempt to replicate the “publish everything to support my brand” strategy of Deepmind. I know Google is not a normal company in that Larry and Sergey have complete control of the company, but sooner or later they have to realize that Deepmind needs to be spun off, and further that Demis is entirely the wrong person to run Google’s AI. He doesn’t care a whit about Google, it is only a vessel to fund his research. Products. A company is about products and customers not research papers. Academia or non-profits are about papers.

benlivengood 3y ago
I think Google's biggest net positives in the world at this point are Waymo and DeepMind. Way better than spending money on new chat apps. Google's history has been having a very lucrative bottom line that allows for very beneficial research with absolutely no hardships on anyone. Supremely better than lining shareholder pockets; shareholders can't think enough quarters ahead for long-term human benefit. Salaries are just the way to attract and retain quality folks.
- GreedClarifies 3y ago
  The billions who use their search everyday would likely disagree. The billions who use YouTube per day would likely disagree. The billions who use android would likely disagree. The hundreds of millions who use gmail, or gsuite would disagree. Products.
  - casey2 3y ago
    Products are at best optimization of a yesterday's technology, in tech you realistically can't peek into the future without spending billions on r&d. Having smart people work on any of the things you listed is a (further) waste of their time.
sidibe 3y ago
Both of these contribute a lot to Google's infra by giving it new challenges. It's not a one-way street, Google wouldn't know what to build towards in their data center/hardware pipeline without these really ambitious projects with huge requirements.

benlivengood 3y ago

I think Google's biggest net positives in the world at this point are Waymo and DeepMind. Way better than spending money on new chat apps. Google's history has been having a very lucrative bottom line that allows for very beneficial research with absolutely no hardships on anyone. Supremely better than lining shareholder pockets; shareholders can't think enough quarters ahead for long-term human benefit. Salaries are just the way to attract and retain quality folks.

GreedClarifies 3y ago
The billions who use their search everyday would likely disagree. The billions who use YouTube per day would likely disagree. The billions who use android would likely disagree. The hundreds of millions who use gmail, or gsuite would disagree. Products.
- casey2 3y ago
  Products are at best optimization of a yesterday's technology, in tech you realistically can't peek into the future without spending billions on r&d. Having smart people work on any of the things you listed is a (further) waste of their time.

sidibe 3y ago

Both of these contribute a lot to Google's infra by giving it new challenges. It's not a one-way street, Google wouldn't know what to build towards in their data center/hardware pipeline without these really ambitious projects with huge requirements.