Source: Quantum Bit
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With a net worth of $105 billion, he still personally codes every day!?
Even the core contributors to Google's latest move, Gemini, include his name.
Yes, he is Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin.
It's rare for a billionaire boss to personally code, let alone with a frequency of "almost every day". Once this was posted on X (formerly Twitter), it immediately drew the attention of many netizens.
Following this, a wave of revelations, like "nested dolls," was reposted and commented on, each revealing that Brin is now genuinely at the forefront of scientific research.
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas revealed that last year, Brin attended a Stability AI event and specifically spoke with Transformer architecture paper author Ashish Vaswani for a few words.
They didn't chat about everyday matters, but rather "why choose sine positional embedding, have you tried other variants."
Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque also confirmed this, "He asked me about VAE architecture and deep diffusion issues."
Former Google X employee and current Normal Computing co-founder and CEO Faris Sbahi also came out to reveal:
I and Brin, along with a small group of GoogleAI members, attended Professor Lenny Susskind's quantum field theory class together.
Brin is always very dedicated, diligently doing homework, and raising insightful questions.
In fact, the billionaire boss personally "laying bricks" is not only due to passion, but also partly due to circumstances. After all, the fire of ChatGPT has reached his home.
"Lying flat" for 3 years and then returning to work
When it comes to Brin, the first tag that everyone thinks of is Google's co-founder.
The technology on which the Google empire initially relied was built by him and another co-founder, Larry Page.
In 1995, while studying at Stanford University, Page and Brin met and began researching a new search engine that could reflect the value of a website.
Three years later, the two successfully built the famous PageRank algorithm.
PageRank determines the ranking of a webpage by analyzing the number and quality of external links pointing to it.
Three days before Google was officially established, the two applied for the first patent for PageRank.
As a result, PageRank became Google's first algorithm for calculating the importance of web pages and later became the most well-known algorithm.
In 2000, Google launched the toolbar, and PageRank had its moment in the spotlight, allowing users to see the score of any page.
Founders with a technical background personally coding in the early stages of entrepreneurship may be considered "natural."
However, most founders in the later stages generally choose to step back from the front line, at least not personally coding, and Brin is no exception.
In 2018, when the PageRank patent expired, many were surprised that Google did not renew it, and a new algorithm had already been launched.
Just a year later, then-president Brin and CEO Page both stepped down from their positions at Alphabet, stating that "it's time to set aside daily management responsibilities and provide more attention and guidance as parents."
The two then continued to stay on the company's board as major shareholders.
From then on, in the eyes of the outside world, the two founders faded from Google's daily work. Occasionally, they would only visit the "Moonshot" department of Google's cutting-edge technology exploration.
However, the idyllic "retirement" life was shattered after the emergence of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT, which went live at the end of November 2022, quickly gained momentum, with over 100 million active users by January. In comparison, TikTok achieved this number in 9 months, and Instagram took 2 years.
Because ChatGPT provides users with a question-and-answer interface that is more "user-friendly" than traditional search engines, making it more convenient for users to query information, it deeply shook the foundation of Google's search business.
In addition, the old rival Microsoft, along with OpenAI, also intends to integrate ChatGPT into its own products.
Faced with this, Google held a series of high-level meetings, sounded the "red code" alert, and called on the co-founders for help.
A debate over "Will ChatGPT replace Google" ensued. The two founders quickly returned, participated in discussions to formulate the future strategy for artificial intelligence, and decided to incorporate chatbots into the search engine.
It was rumored that at the time, Google planned to launch more than 20 new products in 2023 to compete with ChatGPT.
After that, Brin was revealed to have personally modified the LaMDA code, submitting a changelist request for manipulating the data used to train LaMDA, with two specific changes, adding his own username to the configuration file.
It is worth mentioning that after Brin submitted the request, dozens of engineers quickly replied with LGTM.
These four letters can be understood as: I think it's good (looks good to me), and can also be seen as—Let’s Get This Merged, meaning to merge the newly modified code.
After that, Google's version of ChatGPT—Bard—was born. Bard was built on LaMDA and underwent several updates, but the response was mediocre, considered not as good as ChatGPT.
Here is the translated text:
This time, Google finally released its own trump card Gemini, claiming to beat GPT-4 (although it has been accused of faking the video).
Looking through the list of core contributors, Brin is also included.
According to The Wall Street Journal, during the development of Gemini, Brin worked in the office with the research team for 3-4 days a week for several months.
In addition, Brin also holds weekly staff meetings to discuss the latest AI research, and even attends personnel decisions such as hiring researchers.
It's worth noting that Brin is already 50 years old this year, and it's rare for someone with a net worth of over a hundred billion to still be on the front line.
"This is passion"
Seeing Brin's current situation, netizens also have a lot to say:
This is passion, not limited by material value.
Some netizens also said that Brin is very much like the protagonist of the American TV series Don't Mess with Zohan (Zohan is a special agent who has taken down countless opponents, but is eager to work hard for his own ideals).
There is a strong sense of "having a dream and forging ahead".
At the same time, Brin's legendary story has also raised some doubts among netizens, "Founder, coding every day, do you believe it?"
Another netizen joked, "Do you believe that Robin Li teaches physics every day?"
Of course, in the tech industry, in addition to Brin, there are other big shots who, as founders or co-founders, continue to code after achieving financial freedom.
For example, Greg Brockman, co-founder, former chairman, and president of OpenAI. After the recent power struggle at OpenAI, Greg's first thought was to write code and take a selfie.
.
Perhaps Greg believes that code is sweeter than sleep?
Reference link: https://x.com/FarisSbahi/status/1732941059158634660?s=20
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