Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder ousted before joining OpenAI, is now at Google
Barret Zoph, a former executive at OpenAI and co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, has taken a new role as vice president of research at Google. He previously served as chief technology officer at Thinking Machines before being fired in January and returning briefly to OpenAI. A Google spokesperson confirmed Zoph will contribute his expertise in reinforcement learning and post-training to the Gemini team.
Key Takeaways
- Barret Zoph, who previously worked at OpenAI for two years before co-founding Thinking Machines Lab alongside Mira Murati, has rejoined Google as vice president of research.
Zoph served as chief technology officer at Thinking Machines until January, when he was fired from the startup.
- Following his departure, he returned to OpenAI to lead AI enterprise sales, but he left that position after five months in June.
Google confirmed the hiring, telling the Wall Street Journal that the company looks forward to Zoph "bringing his RL and post-training expertise to Gemini."
- His return to Google comes during a period of high executive turnover across the artificial intelligence sector, particularly at OpenAI.
For researchers and observers, these rapid personnel movements among top talent highlight how aggressively major technology companies are competing to secure leadership for their primary AI models.
- Barret Zoph has joined Google as vice president of research after leaving OpenAI in June.
Zoph previously co-founded Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati before being ousted from the startup in January.
- The appointment reflects ongoing leadership turnover across major artificial intelligence companies and research labs.
Barret Zoph, who previously worked at OpenAI for two years before co-founding Thinking Machines Lab alongside Mira Murati, has rejoined Google as vice president of research. Zoph served as chief technology officer at Thinking Machines until January, when he was fired from the startup. Following his departure, he returned to OpenAI to lead AI enterprise sales, but he left that position after five months in June.
Google confirmed the hiring, telling the Wall Street Journal that the company looks forward to Zoph "bringing his RL and post-training expertise to Gemini." His return to Google comes during a period of high executive turnover across the artificial intelligence sector, particularly at OpenAI. For researchers and observers, these rapid personnel movements among top talent highlight how aggressively major technology companies are competing to secure leadership for their primary AI models.
Barret Zoph has joined Google as vice president of research after leaving OpenAI in June. Zoph previously co-founded Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati before being ousted from the startup in January. A spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that Google expects Zoph to bring "RL and post-training expertise to Gemini."
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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