Leading by two years but squandered the opportunity: OpenAI Product Lead Reveals Insider Story of Job Switch, Candidly Describes Former Employer DeepMind as Moving Too Slow

According to 动察 Beating monitoring, Thibault Sottiaux, the Head of Core Product at OpenAI, revealed insider details during an interview with Wired, about his move from Google DeepMind to OpenAI in a fit of pique. Sottiaux disclosed that prior to the global surge of generative AI triggered by the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, DeepMind internally had already developed and kept under wraps for two years a similar large language model and conversational technology. However, due to senior management's conservatism and bureaucracy, this technology was never brought to market.

Sottiaux expressed that the sudden emergence of ChatGPT in 2022 completely jolted him, making him realize that he could no longer stand idly by while valuable technology was left to languish in the hands of his former employer. He admitted, "This (large language model technology) was something we had been sitting on at DeepMind for almost two years, but we just didn't take action at the time." This inaction fueled his determination to relocate to San Francisco and join OpenAI to bring this technology to fruition. Prior to this, he had worked at Google's London office before moving to DeepMind to oversee research infrastructure for projects like AlphaGo.

Today, Sottiaux has been promoted to Head of Core Product at OpenAI, reporting directly to Greg Brockman, taking full charge of the major overhaul of ChatGPT and its integration with the Codex AI sandbox.

His disclosure once again confirms the industry's widespread suspicion: Google is not behind in technology but rather, due to slow internal decision-making, concerns about erosion of its core search business, and excessive risk aversion, it willingly relinquished its lead to the faster-moving OpenAI.