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Comment by shkkmo

5 days ago

It's not just the HQ, the only AI researcher I know personally is an American who moved to London to work on AI with DeepMind well after the acquisition.

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shkkmo

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logifail  5 days ago

The registered HQ and a large research center are in London, but ownership, executive control, substantial staffing, a big fraction of the training/serving compute, and the commercialization pathway run through Alphabet's U.S. operations, so the work is, in practical and legal senses, U.S.-based...

See also https://gwern.net/doc/reinforcement-learning/deepmind/2019-d...

"As part of a wider group reorganisation, the Company distributed intellectual property assets which had a nil book value to another group undertaking on 31 October 2019."

Honestly, claiming DeepMind is still some scrappy London-based startup is quite unfortunate :/

  • klelatti  5 days ago

    > The registered HQ and a large research center are in London ...

    > so the work is, in practical and legal senses, U.S.-based...

    These two statements literally contradict each other in both cases.

  • shkkmo  5 days ago

    > Honestly, claiming DeepMind is still some scrappy London-based startup is quite unfortunate :/

    Since I didn't do that, I'm not sure how that is relevant or productive.

    > work is, in practical and legal senses, U.S.-based...

    This seems factually false. The work happening there has to comply with UK laws, not US laws and the practical locus of researchers located there provides a pool of talent that makes it a better place to do an AI startup than places that lack it.

    The point is that London is enough of a research hub in AI for it to be worth maintaining a significant research presence there and to even make researchers interested in relocating there.

    DeepMind is obviously foriegn owned and controlled now, which does limit the UK's ability to exert control of and profit from it. That only makes weakening the institutions they do control, like ATI, more significant.

  • fossuser  5 days ago

    +1 Europe (especially) and the UK largely don't matter - it's a battle between the US and China, the gap will only grow wider and faster than it already has (and it's already getting really noticeable).

    I attribute it mostly to a cultural problem and I don't think they can fix their politics from the downward spiral they're on. It's why they have a number that rounds to zero of billion dollar software companies and why all their ambitious people do their best to get to the US.