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TL;DR
- Google paid $2.7 billion to rehire AI expert Noam Shazeer, highlighting the intense competition for top AI talent.
- Shazeer, who left Google in 2021, co-founded Character.AI, a leading AI startup valued at $1 billion.
- The deal includes licensing Character.AI’s technology and brings Shazeer back to lead Google’s Gemini AI project.
- This strategic move bypasses regulatory hurdles, allowing Google to strengthen its AI capabilities without a full acquisition.
In a remarkable move, Google has rehired Noam Shazeer, a prominent figure in artificial intelligence (AI), by paying a staggering $2.7 billion. This decision underscores the fierce competition in the tech industry to secure top AI talent. Shazier, who originally joined Google in 2000, was instrumental in developing Google’s early AI technologies and co-authored the influential research paper “Attention Is All You Need” in 2017.
Shazeer’s departure from Google in 2021 followed a disagreement over the release of a chatbot named Meena, which he developed with colleague Daniel De Freitas. Despite its potential to revolutionize Google’s search engine, concerns over security and fairness led to its shelving. Consequently, Shazier left to co-found Character.AI, which quickly became a leading AI startup, reaching a valuation of $1 billion.
The recent deal not only involves licensing Character.AI’s technology but also brings Shazeer back to Google as the technical lead of its AI project Gemini. He will work alongside Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals. This strategic move allows Google to bypass regulatory hurdles typically associated with acquisitions by utilizing a “reverse acqui-hire” approach, which has raised concerns about stifling competition.
Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin expressed enthusiasm about Shazeer’s return, highlighting the company’s renewed focus on advancing AI technology. “Noam is back at Google, which is really cool,” Brin stated. This sentiment reflects Google’s commitment to enhancing its AI capabilities amid growing competition from rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
This acquisition strategy is not unique to Google; other tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon have employed similar tactics to secure AI expertise without undergoing lengthy regulatory processes. The move marks a significant shift in how major companies are navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape, emphasizing the critical importance of innovation and leadership in this field.
Source: TBS News
