Noam Shazeer, one of the earliest Googlers, having joined Google in 2000, had parted ways to start Character.AI. Now, Google has acquired Character.AI at $2.7 billion and brought back Shazeer in a vice president role, leading Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) project. The heavy spending by Google on AI in recent times has been raising eyebrows.
Did Google invest so much in the acquisition just to get Shazeer? Did Google simply resort to acquihiring Character.AI so that it could onboard the AI expert? These are the questions erupting in the minds of many in Silicon Valley, with people wondering about tech majors going overboard in their AI investments.
So, who is Noam Shazeer? Well, this much valued Googler had joined Google way back in 2000, as a software engineer, a role he played for over eight years before continuing his association as principal software engineer in 2012.
He is known for his contribution to research that went on to form the foundation for modern AI, while he was principal software engineer at Google. Shazeer had helped develop a chatbot which was thought to be capable of transforming human-AI interaction. However, when Google failed to release the chatbot considering it unsafe and unfair, Shazeer had quit the company to establish Character.AI to manufacture chatbot assistants for the depressed and lonely.
Now, Google appears to have made the most of Shazeer’s company’s financial crisis. It has acquired Character.AI and Shazeer along with it. Not only did this move take care of Shazeer’s financial issues, but brought his talent and expertise back into Google, as VP engineer and Gemini co-lead.
