Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of AI role-playing startup Character AI, announced his departure from Google on Wednesday. He had been at the company since 2000, leaving only for a three-year period when he left to co-found Character AI. Two years ago, Google rehired Shazeer in a $2.7 billion deal that gave the tech giant access to the startup's technology. The move is the latest in a series of shufflings between the top AI labs, including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Shazeer is credited for being one of the foundational minds behind modern generative AI. He co-authored the seminal 2017 paper 'Attention Is All You Need,' which introduced the Transformer architecture. Before leaving Google, Shazeer had also reportedly been stirring the pot when it came to political issues. According to The Information, Shazeer voiced opinions on internal messaging boards about transgender identity and Israel's war in Gaza that resulted in management deleting his posts. Whether...
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