{"id":320182,"date":"2025-12-17T03:13:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/320182\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T03:13:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:13:20","slug":"google-cofounder-sergey-brin-said-he-was-spiraling-before-returning-to-work-on-gemini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/320182\/","title":{"rendered":"Google cofounder Sergey Brin said he was ‘spiraling’ before returning to work on Gemini"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google<\/a> cofounder Sergey Brin thought retiring from Google in 2019 would mean quietly studying physics for days on end in caf\u00e9s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when COVID hit soon after, he realized he may have made a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat didn\u2019t work because there were no more caf\u00e9s,\u201d he told students at Stanford University\u2019s School of Engineering centennial celebration last week, Business Insider reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The transition from president of Google parent company Alphabet to a fortysomething retiree ended up not being as smooth as he imagined, and soon after he said he was \u201cspiraling\u201d and \u201ckind of not being sharp\u201d as he stepped away from busy corporate life.<\/p>\n

Therefore, when Google began allowing small numbers of employees back into the office, Brin tagged along and put his efforts into what would become Google\u2019s AI model, Gemini. Despite being the world\u2019s fourth-richest man, with a net worth of $247 billion<\/a>, retirement wasn\u2019t for him, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be able to have that technical creative outlet, I think that\u2019s very rewarding,\u201d Brin said. \u201cIf I\u2019d stayed retired, I think that would\u2019ve been a big mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2023, Brin was back to work in a big way, visiting the company\u2019s office three to four times a week, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>, working with researchers and holding weekly discussions with Google employees\u00a0about new AI research. He also reportedly had a hand in some personnel decisions, like hiring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skip forward to 2025, and Brin\u2019s plans for a peaceful retirement of quiet study are out the window. In February, he made waves for an internal memo in which, despite Google\u2019s three-day in-office policy, he recommended Google employees go into the company\u2019s Mountain View, Calif., offices at least every weekday, and that 60 hours a week was the \u201csweet spot\u201d of productivity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brin\u2019s newfound efforts at work may have been necessary as OpenAI\u2019s release of ChatGPT in 2022 caught the tech giant off guard, after it had led the field of AI research with DeepMind<\/a> and Google Brain for years.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Google for its part has been rising in the AI race. Analysts raved<\/a> last month about Gemini 3, the company\u2019s latest update to its LLM, and Google\u2019s stock is up about 8% since its release. Meanwhile, OpenAI earlier this month declared a \u201ccode red<\/a>,\u201d its highest alert level, to improve ChatGPT.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brin added in the talk at Stanford that Google has an advantage in the AI arms race precisely because of the foundation it laid over years through its neural network research, its custom AI chips, and its data center infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery few have that scale,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google cofounder Sergey Brin thought retiring from Google in 2019 would mean quietly studying physics for days on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,1921,5627,844,874,227,86,16952,56,54,55,126538],"class_list":["post-320182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-google","tag-openai","tag-tech","tag-technology","tag-the-future-of-work","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-view-from-the-c-suite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}