5 ms·
> Demis now has a load of people reporting to him who previously were rooting for his failure Having been in both places (Brain and DM), this feels so far from
by manux 3y ago
> Demis now has a load of people reporting to him who previously were rooting for his failure
Having been in both places (Brain and DM), this feels so far from what I experienced that I must ask, what are you basing this on?
- uptownfunk 3y agoThis reads pretty normal for big tech corporate politics.
- khazhoux 3y agoI never like the word “politics.” It carries the association of a bunch of people just playing backstabbing games to further themselves. While this does occur, in general what I see is that with any large-enough group of people, there will be strong differences of opinions on how to steer the project to success. In fact, I don’t think I can remember a single “political battle” that didn’t stem from a legitimate concern in how some project was being run and what they had decided to focus on.
- uptownfunk 3y agoLike it or not, politics is pretty much your day to day life at vp+ level at these companies. But we can all pretend to live in idealism la la land where everything is operating on someone’s best intention.
- caminante 3y agoYou worked there and didn't know of any of the intra-company autonomy infighting that leaked into the news? [0] [1] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/20/google-consolidates-ai-research-divisions-into-google-deepmind/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/20/google-consolidates-ai-res... [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-unit-deepmind-triedand-failedto-win-ai-autonomy-from-parent-11621592951 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-unit-deepmind-triedand-f...
- sangnoir 3y agoIf you've worked at a large organization, you'll know the news can paint a cartoonishly distorted picture largely informed by the perspective of the anonymous sources, journalist and news organization.
- caminante 3y agoThe WSJ article expressly considers that factor and goes into detail on what's under the surface. > The end of the long-running negotiations, which hasn’t previously been reported, is the latest example of how Google and other tech giants are trying to strengthen their control over the study and advancement of artificial intelligence.
- f5e4 3y agoCould you provide a quote from either of these articles that supports the statement being questioned: > Demis now has a load of people reporting to him who previously were rooting for his failure
- caminante 3y agoYes. Further, I don't understand how explicit examples of company infighting over autonomy doesn't already address your point.
- f5e4 3y agoFighting between Deepmind and Google leadership over autonomy doesn't really directly support that Google Brain employees and Deepmind had infighting. They seem to me to be quite different things. It seems like a big leap to take these articles as support the statement: > Demis now has a load of people reporting to him who previously were rooting for his failure It certainly might be true, but I'm missing the connection between these articles and the statement.
- caminante 3y ago
- sangnoir 3y agoOne of HNs failure-modes is inaccuracies get voted to the top if they seem correct to the majority of voters whose biases resonate with poster's. Aside: thank you for asking. When I previously encountered incorrect top-level comments that I knew to be wrong (insider information), I'd simply ignore and move on. You've inspired me to push back more often.
- bookofjoe 3y agoBut not always! There are those among us who like nothing better than to double down in a flame war. One nice thing about having visited often over the past 7 years is that I know whom to avoid responding to (for the most part).
- hazn 3y agoThis is a accurate reflection of biases of humans in general. A good story trumps truth.
- nostrademons 3y agoAnd also why AI and LLMs are hot right now. A good story trumps truth.
- return_to_monke 3y agothis is actually what an AI would do!
- nr2x 3y agoGood managers insulate reports from the politics, if you weren’t plugged into it it’s either your manager did a good job or it’s the only part of Google that isn’t 90% politics. Signed, “didn’t work at brain or dm but was involved in a lot of alphabet level decision making”.