Some of the biggest names on Google’s AI team got new jobs this week. In some cases, including for legendary Googler Jeff Dean, those jobs are no longer at Google. Given that Google’s models seem to be behind the best of what’s coming out of anthropic and OpenAI, is this a sign of Google in turmoil? Is it about Demis Hassabis wanting something more interesting to work on than virtual assistants? Or is there something else entirely happening here?
After that, we talk about Disney’s plan to put even more stuff in the Disney Plus app, David Ellison’s defense of… David Ellison, the scourge of the “time spent” metric, Brendan Carr’s ongoing assault on free speech, the Spider-Man ads appearing in your BMW, and much more.