not like other parts of Google are lacking in talented ML researchers.
I wonder if Google has split it's AI research so that they funnel all their more fundamental research from different departments into DeepMind and make them the 'face' of publicity friendly easy to understand AI research results.
Or it could be that all their top AI talent gravitate towards DeepMind, and the people that work there simply are the best AI talent that Google has.
From experience DeepMind is the #1 goal for any AI/ML person anywhere in Europe. I know people don’t necessarily want to be googlers, but Deepmind ? Yes. If you’re brilliant in the field where else would you work? OpenAI is now completely different from where it started.
It’s also heavily based in London and I know they absorb basically all the top Europe folks who want to stay close to home. Not everyone wants to go to the US.
Demis is also a bit of a legend and I know DeepMind people teach/recruit at UCL his old university. I assume they do so everywhere in the UK but London is an easy talent pool to make and recruit talent for them. So they have a full integrated vertical stack for talent.
I wonder if Google has split it's AI research so that they funnel all their more fundamental research from different departments into DeepMind and make them the 'face' of publicity friendly easy to understand AI research results.
Or it could be that all their top AI talent gravitate towards DeepMind, and the people that work there simply are the best AI talent that Google has.