>Recently we learned that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-hire a single AI researcher who had left to start his own company. This is a prime example of all the

>Recently we learned that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-hire a single AI researcher who had left to start his own company. This is a prime example of all the various news outlets (even "respected" newspapers) making us collectively dumber for reading them: https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+%242.7+billion+to+re-hire+a+single+AI+researcher https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+%242.7+billion+to+re-... Also, the author's blogpost hotlinks to the supporting url (futurism.com/the-byte/) that has these sentences: >Google reportedly spent $2.7 billion to rehire AI expert Noam Shazeer — an astonishing amount of money for what boils down to the expertise of a single computer scientist. [...] As companies continue to pour billions into the environmentally damaging and still largely unproven tech, though, investors are starting to ask some tough questions. Should they really be paying several billion dollars to get the expertise of a single hire It makes it seem like Google wired all $2.7 billion into Noam Shazeer's bank account. Instead, the more accurate picture is a 30-member team "pseudo-acquihire" of Character.AI without officially buying the startup via a "licensing deal" . Excerpt from https://aimresearch.co/market-industry/old-employees-new-dollars-googles-2-7-billion-investment-in-character-ais-reverse-acquihire-for-ai-innovation https://aimresearch.co/market-industry/old-employees-new-dol...: >But now, in an unexpected and somewhat controversial twist, Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas are heading back to Google—along with 30 top researchers from his startup. The tech giant has orchestrated a rare “reverse acquihire,” bringing the AI pioneer back into the fold without buying out Character.AI. Instead, Google opted for a non-exclusive license to use Character.AI’s advanced large language model (LLM) technology, allowing the startup to exist independently but without its cutting-edge talent. Maybe all that was Google's legal jujitsu of avoiding potential FTC/DOJ anti-monopoly actions. Either way, the mainstream headlines are terrible. The misinformation is spread further by the blog author copy&pasting them.