Just a couple of months ago, a leaked memo said to be from a Google researcher cast doubt on the company’s future in AI, stating that it has “no moat” in the industry — and now, we seemingly have confirmation that it was real. In an interview with Decoder, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind, told The Verge that although he believes the memo was legitimate, he disagrees with its conclusions.
Read his quotes and it sounds like he thinks that they can continue with the closed source path, despite of the memo (which I believed had plenty of important points).
You think we’ll see them make a fully open source model?
The memo clearly highlight the importance of the “ecosystem” built from open source models, the research done by 3rd parties that can be directly useful, such of what is happening with stable diffusion.
Truth is that google is in a tricky position at the moment. Open source would be the best choice for everyone, google researcher, engineers, public, but it might put google business at risk.
They have to guess what is the less risk… And they’ll clearly go for the closed source path, as it is closer to the mindset of business people in Google
Yea I don’t think they will either which is a shame it would’ve been interesting to see what they could have done with an open source model combined with the insane resources they have and 3rd party.