Google’s Top AI Brains Are Leaving to Launch Discovery Loop

Four top-tier AI scientists have left Google to start a new company called Discovery Loop, which will use automated scientific and engineering loops to make discoveries in fields like chip design, drug discovery, and biology. The founders are leveraging an approach where AI systems autonomously propose, implement, and evaluate experiments, then use the results to improve themselves before tackling problems in other domains. This departure is significant because these engineers, including Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat who were among Google's earliest hires, have been central to the company's major technology developments over nearly 27 years. While Google is taking an investment stake in Discovery Loop and will provide compute power for the first year, the loss represents a notable blow to Google's position in the competitive AI sector.