Francois Chollet is leaving Google

If I were to speculate, I would guess he quit Google. 2 days ago, his $1+ million Artificial General Intelligence competition ended. Chollet is now judging the submissions and will announce the winners in a few weeks. The timing there can't be a coincidence.

Google, in my experience, is a place where smart people go to retire. I have many brilliant friends who work there, but all of them have essentially stopped producing interesting work since the day they started. They all seem happy and comfortable, but not ambitious.

I'm sure the pay is great, but it's not a place for smart people who are interested in doing something. I've followed Francois (and had the chance to correspond with him a bit) for many years now, and I wouldn't be surprised if the desire to create something became more important than the comfort of Google.

I wonder how/if that mentality will shift over time. As it seems the market capture phase it over and the current big tech aren't simply keeping top talent around as a capture piece anymore.

Maybe they'll still do it, but basically only if it feels you can startup a billion dollar business. As opposed to a million dollar one.

Not really any different than what happened to IBM, Intel, Cisco, etc.

The people that want to build great things want the potential huge reward too, so they go to a startup to do it.

Except… it’s about leverage/impact factor. Google has very large impact, so if you do something big and central you’re instantly in the hands of hundreds of millions / billions of people. That’s a very different situation than IBM or Cisco.