Just a couple of months ago, a leaked memo said to be from a Google researcher cast doubt on the company’s future in AI, stating that it has “no moat” in the industry — and now, we seemingly have confirmation that it was real. In an interview with Decoder, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind, told The Verge that although he believes the memo was legitimate, he disagrees with its conclusions.
The memo clearly highlight the importance of the “ecosystem” built from open source models, the research done by 3rd parties that can be directly useful, such of what is happening with stable diffusion.
Truth is that google is in a tricky position at the moment. Open source would be the best choice for everyone, google researcher, engineers, public, but it might put google business at risk.
They have to guess what is the less risk… And they’ll clearly go for the closed source path, as it is closer to the mindset of business people in Google