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Nobel Laureate John Jumper Joins Anthropic; Google Sees Key Talent Depart

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • John Jumper, a co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on AI protein structure prediction, is leaving Google DeepMind to join Anthropic.
  • This follows the departure of Noam Shazeer, a key figure in Google's Gemini AI model development, who joined OpenAI.
  • These high-profile departures highlight a trend of top AI talent moving to startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, which are perceived as less bureaucratic and more focused on superintelligence development.

Google is experiencing a significant exodus of key artificial intelligence talent, with Nobel laureate John Jumper the latest high-profile figure to depart. Jumper, co-winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking work on the AI model AlphaFold 2, announced he is leaving Google DeepMind to join Anthropic, a rival AI company.

Jumper's departure comes shortly after Noam Shazeer, a vice president at Google who co-led the development of the Gemini AI model, revealed his move to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Shazeer is a pivotal researcher, having co-authored the 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need," which introduced the Transformer architecture, the foundation for most major large language models today. He had previously co-founded Character.AI before Google reacquired him in 2024 for a substantial sum.

I have decided to step down from Google DeepMind after nine years and will be joining Anthropic.

— John JumperJohn Jumper announced his departure from Google DeepMind and his move to Anthropic on X (formerly Twitter).

Jumper expressed gratitude to Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, for the opportunity to lead the AlphaFold team. His work on AlphaFold 2 dramatically improved the accuracy of predicting protein 3D structures, a long-standing challenge in life sciences. The departures raise questions about Google's ability to retain top AI researchers amidst intense competition.

Industry observers suggest that startups like OpenAI and Anthropic are attracting talent by offering environments perceived as less bureaucratic and more conducive to focused research on advanced AI, including superintelligence. This trend indicates a dynamic and competitive landscape in the race for AI dominance, with established tech giants facing increasing pressure to retain their leading researchers.

Demis Hassabis gave me the opportunity to lead the AlphaFold team just six months after I received my PhD.

— John JumperJumper expressed his gratitude to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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