Noam Shazeer

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Noam Shazeer
Born1976 (age 49–50)
EducationDuke University, B.S. Mathematics and Computer Science (1998)
Known forTransformer (deep learning)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Websitenoamshazeer.com

Noam Shazeer (born 1975 or 1976[1]) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur known for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and deep learning, particularly in the development of transformer models and natural language processing.

Career

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Noam Shazeer joined Google in 2000. One of his first major achievements was improving the spelling corrector of Google's search engine.[1] In 2017, Shazeer was one of the lead authors of the seminal paper "Attention Is All You Need",[2][3][1] which introduced the transformer architecture.

At Google, Shazeer and his colleague Daniel de Freitas built a chatbot named Meena.[1] Following the refusal of Google to release the chatbot to the public, Shazeer and Freitas left the company in 2021 to found Character.AI.[1][4]

In 2023 Time magazine chose Shazeer as one of the 100 most influential people in the AI world.[5]

In August 2024, it was reported that Shazeer would be returning to Google to co-lead the Gemini AI project.[6] Shazeer was appointed as technical lead on Gemini, along with Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals.[7] It was part of a $2.7 billion deal for Google to license Character's technology.[1][8] Since he owns 30-40% of the company, it is estimated he netted $750 million-$1 billion.[8]

Views

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Shazeer said about artificial general intelligence that he doesn't "particularly care about AGI in the sense of wanting something that can do absolutely everything a person can do”.[9] When asked in 2023 if he is afraid that AGI will destroy the world, he said: "No. Not yet. [...] We’re going to work on it as the technology improves".[10]

When asked why do large language models work he answered: "My best guess is divine benevolence [...] Nobody really understands what’s going on. This is a very experimental science [...] It’s more like alchemy or whatever chemistry was in the Middle Ages.”[9]

Shazeer has stated, "I do not believe that humans have an attribute called gender... I do not believe that G-d puts people in the wrong bodies. I do not believe that it is okay to sterilize children."[11]

Personal life

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Shazeer is an orthodox Jew.[12][13][14] His grandparents escaped the Holocaust into the Soviet Union and later lived some time in Israel before emigrating to the USA.[12] His father, Dov Shazeer, was a math teacher who became an engineer[12] and his mother was a homemaker.[13] His sister was ordained as a rabbi by Hebrew College.[12] Noam was born in Philadelphia. He won a gold medal with perfect score at International Mathematical Olympiad 1994 as a member of the USA team. He went on to study math and computer science at Duke University[12] in the years 1994-1998.[13] In Duke he got a math scholarship[10] and, as part of the Duke math team, won prizes in several math tournaments.[12][15][16] He started studying in a graduate program in Berkeley but did not finish it.[12] He is a father of three and is married to Yael Shacham Shazeer, who also works at Google.[12] He lives in Palo Alto, California.[12]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Lua error in Module:Cite_Q/config at line 10: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
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  11. ^ https://www.theinformation.com/articles/googles-2-7-billion-ai-hire-tests-companys-speech-limits-inflammatory-posts
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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