On July 25, renowned engineer Jeff Dean addressed an audience of 6,000 aspiring entrepreneurs at Y Combinator's Startup School, held at the Chase Center in San Francisco. Dean, who has made significant contributions to Google as a cofounder of Google Brain and the chief scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, is also the technical colead of the company’s premier AI initiative, Gemini. He has collaborated extensively with Sanjay Ghemawat, developing critical components of Google’s computing and search systems. A humorous anecdote circulated in tech circles suggests that his resume lists only what he hasn’t accomplished, as that would be considerably shorter. During his talk, Dean was asked about essential areas for startup founders to consider.
Dean emphasized the necessity of selecting a project that one is passionate about and that holds real-world relevance. He shared his personal interest in creating an automated version of the scientific method. He described the approach: “You propose an experiment, set up the necessary elements to conduct it, assess its outcomes, and then analyze the results.” He noted that executing thousands of such automated experiments could lead to revolutionary advancements in fields ranging from science and biology to chip design and the enhancement of AI models.
What the audience didn't realize was that Dean was unveiling his own covert startup, which he had recently launched. Today, this venture is official: after nearly 27 years with Google, Dean, along with Ghemawat and two other elite AI researchers, is embarking on a new journey with a company called Discovery Loop.
While Google will maintain a stake in this new endeavor, the departure is a significant setback for the tech giant, which is striving to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. The exit of Dean and Ghemawat, who were among Google’s inaugural hires, is akin to legendary musicians like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards leaving the Rolling Stones to venture out on their own. To compound matters, the remaining cofounders bring their own astounding credentials: Oriol Vinyals, a VP of research at DeepMind and a technical leader for Gemini, and Quoc Le, a cofounder of Google Brain noted for his work on Google’s AutoML-Zero project, which employs machine learning algorithms to autonomously develop AI tools.
In an interview I conducted with the cofounders just ahead of their launch, Dean revealed that the concept for Discovery Loop emerged only a few weeks prior. He was quickly joined by his three collaborators, who not only share a professional history but also friendship, often vacationing together. “Though we were each working on different projects, we began to recognize how AI could potentially automate scientific and engineering processes,” he recalled.
The team's initial plan outlines that Discovery Loop will serve as its own first client, with the autonomous experimentation loops being used to refine the company’s advanced machine learning algorithms. This enhanced software will lay the groundwork for an AI system capable of addressing challenges across various domains. Quoc Le expressed his enthusiasm: “I’m very excited about automating machine learning. It might even lead us to discover a novel transformer architecture.”
