Desperate Google Paid $2.7 Billion to Get a Single AI Researcher Back

“Noam is clearly a fantastic individual in that house. Is he 20 instances pretty much as good as different folks?”

Gifted Mr. Shazeer

Google reportedly spent $2.7 billion to rehire AI professional Noam Shazeer — an astonishing amount of cash for what boils right down to the experience of a single pc scientist.

Shazeer left Google in 2021 after 21 years on the firm to begin his personal startup referred to as Character.AI, which permits customers to work together with chatbots that roleplay as imaginary characters or well-known figures.

The official purpose Google gave billions of {dollars} to the startup was to license its tech. However because the Wall Street Journal reports, “Shazeer’s return is extensively seen as the first purpose” as to why the tech big lower the examine.

The deal highlights simply how a lot cash tech corporations are spending to get a possible edge within the AI arms race. In parallel, Silicon Valley buyers have grown very concerned as of late that corporations like Google or Microsoft are throwing away numerous billions of {dollars} with no return in sight, inflating a massive bubble that is set to burst.

Look no additional than an organization spending almost three billion on getting a single engineer to come back again.

“Noam is clearly a fantastic individual in that house,” Stanford Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory director Christopher Manning informed the WSJ. However is he “20 instances pretty much as good as different folks?”

Window Procuring

Whereas Shazeer wasn’t the only or direct recipient of Google’s $2.7 billion, he raked in a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from his stake within the startup as a part of the deal, sources informed the WSJ. That is nonetheless an enormous paycheck, particularly contemplating Shazeer did not promote his firm.

Shazeer was a foundational a part of Google’s early efforts to develop AI. A 2017 paper he coauthored is basically seen because the early daybreak of the massive language fashions as we all know them at this time.

And he is not shy about his contributions. On his LinkedIn, he claims that “I’ve invented a lot of the present revolution in giant language fashions.”

The pc scientist left Google after the corporate refused to launch a chatbot dubbed Meena to the general public in 2021, citing security issues, per the WSJ. Paradoxically, OpenAI launched ChatGPT one 12 months later, highlighting an enormous wasted alternative for Google.

In August, information emerged that Shazeer would return to Google as a part of Google’s mum or dad firm Alphabet’s cope with Character.AI.

A number of different related offers present that tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon are racing to safe AI researchers like Shazeer. In June, as an illustration, Amazon hired top executives from an AI startup referred to as Adept via a know-how licensing deal.

As corporations proceed to pour billions into the environmentally damaging and still largely unproven tech, although, buyers are beginning to ask some robust questions. Ought to they actually be paying a number of billion {dollars} to get the experience of a single rent — or is it a colossal waste of cash that will not ever see a return? All we are able to do is watch the state of affairs play out.

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