{"id":40836,"date":"2025-12-15T11:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/sergey-brin-who-came-back-to-google-to-work-on-gemini-says-staying-retired-would-have-been-a-big-mistake\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T11:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:42:09","slug":"sergey-brin-who-came-back-to-google-to-work-on-gemini-says-staying-retired-would-have-been-a-big-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/sergey-brin-who-came-back-to-google-to-work-on-gemini-says-staying-retired-would-have-been-a-big-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"Sergey Brin, who came back to Google to work on Gemini, says staying retired would have been a &#8216;big mistake&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/693fe68164858d02d216c92d?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Sergey Brin at 11th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, on April 5, 2025.\"\/><figcaption>Google cofounder Sergey Brin says a short-lived retirement left him restless \u2014 and pulled him back into the race to build Google&#039;s Gemini.<\/p>\n<p>Axelle\/Bauer-Griffin\/FilmMagic via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Sergey Brin says retiring before COVID left him &quot;spiraling&quot; and pushed him back into Google&#039;s AI work.<\/li>\n<li>He&#039;d planned to &quot;sit in caf\u00e9s and study physics&quot; in his retirement, but couldn&#039;t due to the pandemic.<\/li>\n<li>Brin admitted Google initially &quot;underinvested&quot; in AI and let rivals get the upper hand.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sergey Brin tried retirement \u2014 and immediately regretted it.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at Stanford University&#039;s School of Engineering centennial celebration last week, the Google cofounder said he stepped back from day-to-day work in December 2019, imagining he&#039;d spend leisurely days and &quot;sit in caf\u00e9s and study physics.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Then the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;That didn&#039;t work because there were no more caf\u00e9s,&quot; he joked.<\/p>\n<p>Worse, he said he felt himself &quot;spiraling&quot; and &quot;kind of not being sharp&quot; without the intellectual stimulation he&#039;d always relied on.<\/p>\n<p>So as soon as Google began allowing a small number of employees back into its offices, he joined them \u2014 eventually diving into what became Gemini, Google&#039;s flagship AI model.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;To be able to have that technical creative outlet, I think that&#039;s very rewarding,&quot; the 52-year-old said. &quot;If I&#039;d stayed retired, I think that would&#039;ve been a big mistake.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>Inside Brin&#039;s AI rethink<\/h2>\n<p>Brin also offered a candid assessment of Google&#039;s AI trajectory.<\/p>\n<p>Despite publishing the 2017 &quot;Transformer&quot; paper that underpins nearly every major AI model today, he said Google &quot;underinvested&quot; in the technology and was &quot;too scared to bring it to people because chatbots say dumb things.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI, he said, &quot;ran with it, which, good for them.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Still, he said Google retained an edge through its long-standing investment in neural-network research, custom AI chips, and massive data center infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Very few have that scale,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Asked what students should study in an era when AI can code, Brin warned against fleeing technical fields.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I wouldn&#039;t switch to comparative literature because you think AI is good at coding,&quot; he said. &quot;The AI is probably even better at comparative literature.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He also shared what he sees as the biggest mistake founders make \u2014 one he admits he fell into with Google Glass.<\/p>\n<p>He rushed the product before it was affordable, polished, or even actually ready.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Everybody thinks they&#039;re the next Steve Jobs,&quot; he said. &quot;I&#039;ve definitely made that mistake.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Now deeply involved in Gemini, Brin said the pace of AI development keeps him energized.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s absolutely amazing just the rate of innovation,&quot; he said. &quot;If you skip the news for a month, you&#039;re way behind.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google cofounder Sergey Brin says a short-lived retirement left him restless \u2014 and pulled him back into the race to build Google&#039;s Gemini. Axelle\/Bauer-Griffin\/FilmMagic via Getty Images Sergey Brin says retiring before COVID left him &quot;spiraling&quot; and pushed him back into Google&#039;s AI work. He&#039;d planned to &quot;sit in caf\u00e9s and study physics&quot; in his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}