Transformer core author leaves DeepMind to transfer to OpenAI

On June 18, Google DeepMind Researcher Shazeer formally joined OpenAI, who will be the head of structural research, primarily exploring new and large model structures and optimizing the existing Transformer architecture. In 2017, Shazeer was the central author of the landmark paper, “Attention Is All You Need”, and was considered the one who contributed most to the Transformer architecture. In 2021, he left to create Character.AI because Google refused to publish chat robots; in 2024 Google was called back for $2.7 billion and appointed Gemini Technical Officer. This second departure was seen as a major setback in Google’s competition for top AI talent and reflected a conflict between the approval mechanisms of big companies and the fast-producting demands of top researchers。