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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

Seeing the comments, I can't but imagine what kind of personality is needed to not be affected by that kind of reputation and recognition. Like everyone expects everything you do or say to be really smart. I guess its kind of like being a celebrity; but instead of looking or acting good you have to be smart all the time.

Edit: Also, how is Peter Norvig not Google's AI chief???

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> I can't but imagine what kind of personality is needed to not be affected by that kind of reputation and recognition.

The reason many Harvard grads keep the fact that they went to Harvard to themselves is because they have a similar expectation -- that everything they say will be brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q51ld-scMI8

Ouch :-)

Norvig's title is "Director of Research", presumably this is a different position than "AI Chief". Source: http://www.norvig.com/

And to be clear, he is a Director of Research, not the Director of Research. There is more than one.

> Also, how is Peter Norvig not Google's AI chief

He is not doing any pratical AI stuff at this moment. Jeff is still productive AF even approaching his 50s.

That's not a great thing to say. Why wouldn't a 50 year old be productive?

I'm inferring they meant productive in practical tech role, as opposed to moving on to management or leadership roles, which most people tend to do. It's admirable, managing burnout.

Nothing to do with ability.

Burnout, management, contentment with prior success, etc.

"Edit: Also, how is Peter Norvig not Google's AI chief???"

I would imagine Norvig as more a thinker and less of a doer. I think Google has reached a point where their flavor of AI works sufficiently well where now the only problem left is getting buy-in from as many teams as possible within Google.

Jeff Dean might be more decision-maker, politically connected(internally at Google) and less of a thinker-type in moving this initiative forward. They're both extremely valuable just in different ways.

It's one thing to build it(AI) but an entire other problem to get the AI into Google's huge suite of internal/external systems and products.

Why would he be?

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