Noam Shazeer, who resigned from the search giant in 2021, will join Google to be one of the leaders of the Gemini AI model.
The race for artificial intelligence (AI) does not stop for major technology companies, including Google. Today, the Californian company has reintegrated one of the most remarkable minds in the sector into its ranks.
It is about Noam Shazeer who resigned from Google in 2021 after the company refused to launch the chatbot service he created. Shazeer founded the startup Character.AI months after leaving the company.
The recent agreement, more than $2.7 billion as shown this week The Wall Street Journal includes purchase of character licenses.
The agreement also takes into account another important point: that the engineer returns to work in the technology company to become one of the leaders of Gemini the AI model developed by the DeepMind division.
Who is Noam Shazeer
Shazeer, now 48, is a software engineer who joined Google in 2000, just two years after the company was founded. The first big project he had was creating a tool to improve spelling correction when using the search engine, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Some time later, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of the tech giant, realized that Shazeer could create AI without major problems.
In 2017, while still at Google, Shazeer co-authored a research paper that positioned him as one of the pioneers in the field of AI, titled “Attention is all you need” (Attention is all you need).
The study, carried out with 7 other Google researchers, proposed the creation of a computer model capable of predicting the next word in a sequence, which paved the way for the development of new technologies used today like ChatGPT and Midjourney .
Some time later, the computer scientist formed alliances with Daniel De Freitas, who also worked at the search giant at the time. The two created a chatbot they named Meena.
However, the tool created by Shazeer and De Freitas was not well received at Google. And company executives reportedly refused to release it for reasons of “security” and “fairness,” the WSJ reported. In 2021, both men resigned from the company.
“I left Google to pursue entrepreneurship and work on the world’s toughest problems rather than settling for small roles within a much larger company.” Shazeer recounted in a magazine article time in 2023.
How Character appeared and why he went into crisis
After leaving Google, in September 2022, Shazeer teamed up with De Freitas to found Character, a chatbot application that allows you to interact with AI versions of real and fictional characters, such as Elon Musk, Frodo Baggins, Oprah Winfrey and Kanye West. .
The intention of the tool was to “resume the principle of ChatGPT”, with the difference that create and personalize bots according to the preferences of each user, Time underlines this. After creating characters, users of the service can post them for other community members to chat with.
“We think the best use cases are things we haven’t thought of yet. Our job is to put something very versatile and usable in the hands of billions of people,” Shazeer told this news outlet.
The same year that Character was released, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Over the months, interest in these artificial intelligence tools has become more and more widespread and the startup has thus made its first profits. But his journey was also strewn with pitfalls.
By being able to personalize chatbots, it was common for users to want to participate in role-playing games. Shazeer and De Freitas disagreed with this situation.
The company has also struggled to generate solid revenue. This was because it was necessary to constantly invest in its technology, especially in the face of competition from other giant companies like Microsoft.
Earlier this year, Shazeer was forced to look for other ways to raise money for Character. They tried with Meta, but eventually the million dollar deal with Google was finalized.
In August, the company founded in 2022 shared the announcement of the alliance on its official blog.
“Over the past couple of years, the landscape has changed: there are now many pre-trained models available. Given these changes, we see an advantage in relying more on third-party LLMs alongside our own. “This allows us to dedicate even more resources to continuing education and creating new product experiences for our growing user base,” they said in the release.
Why Google paid a millionaire amount in agreement with Noam Shazeer
According to the American newspaper, the amount paid by the tech giant in the deal is “unusually high” considering that the company founded by Shazeer has not even been sold.
But, at the same time, Within Google, they consider the engineer’s return to be the most important reason why they agreed to pay the amount more than character licenses.
Another point to consider is that the 2.7 billion will not go entirely into Shazeer’s pocket. It was also used to buy back shares from investors and compensate other members of the Character team.
Source: Latercera
I am David Jack and I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years. As an experienced journalist, I specialize in covering sports news with a focus on golf. My articles have been published by some of the most respected publications in the world including The New York Times and Sports Illustrated.
