Your comment says he's stepping up, the HN title says he's stepping down, the article says he's stepping aside. Nobody says if it's a step forward or backward.
There is no way a Chief Scientist (essentially IC) role is more important than leading the whole of DeepMind, 6000 people strong, working on the most important product for the future of Alphabet.
This means Demis wanted a change and to work on other things, it's not Google wanting this.
Your comment says he's stepping up, the HN title says he's stepping down, the article says he's stepping aside. Nobody says if it's a step forward or backward.
We know he's definitely stepping. That's a start.
It's just a jump to the left...
Yeah I actually read this more as them scrambling because Jeff Dean is leaving? Because that is the role he is taking up
There is no way a Chief Scientist (essentially IC) role is more important than leading the whole of DeepMind, 6000 people strong, working on the most important product for the future of Alphabet.
This means Demis wanted a change and to work on other things, it's not Google wanting this.
Dean has pretty big symbolic importance inside of Google regardless of what his role title is/was
Edit: sibling story in front page links to this which explains better in its lede text than what I just wrote: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/technology/google-researc...
Or Sundar wanted Demis to change to work on other things.