Sergey Brin stayed in Google office till 1 am to work on Gemini AI: 'Top tier engineer'

Sergey Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998.

In a recent interaction, an X user sparked a debate by highlighting Google co-founder Sergey Brin's role as a core contributor to the Gemini project. The tweet read, "Sergey Brin being a core contributor on the Gemini paper is peak technical founder."

However, another user expressed skepticism, pointing out that the Gemini paper credited over 700 contributors, with someone else named above Brin being a program manager for language inclusivity.

The plot thickened when a DeepMind employee entered the conversation to clarify that the order of names in the paper was randomized, except for the first six names that spell out "Gemini." According to the employee, “Sergey was in with us basically every day, often pairing!”

sergey brin being a core contributor on the gemini paper is peak technical founder pic.twitter.com/ILqca6RjhT

— near (@nearcyan) December 6, 2023

Name order was randomised (except for the first 6 names which spell out Gemini) - Sergey was in with us basically every day, often pairing!

— Sholto Douglas (@_sholtodouglas) December 6, 2023

Another Google DeepMind executive also recalled his experience with Brin.

"My first real/long interaction with him when he started coming in to help on Gemini was staying at the office until 1am staring at a Colab, fixing a gnarly numerics bug. He grasped my code in minutes. Top tier engineer, scientist, and a pleasure to work with," Enrique Piqueras wrote.

Brin, 50, the co-founder of Google and a key figure in the tech industry, has a long history of pushing the boundaries of innovation. Born in Russia, Brin immigrated to the United States and, alongside Larry Page, co-founded Google in 1998. He stepped down as the president of Alphabet in 2019.

Despite stepping back from day-to-day operations at Google in recent years, Brin remains an influential figure in the company and continues to contribute to ambitious projects like Gemini.

Gemini represents Google's latest leap into the AI arena, aiming to compete with rivals OpenAI's GPT-4 and Meta's Llama 2. This AI model is the result of the merger of Alphabet's AI research units, DeepMind and Google Brain, into a unified division known as Google DeepMind, led by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

Gemini's uniqueness lies in its "multimodal" nature, enabling it to comprehend and process various types of information simultaneously, including text, code, audio, image, and video. The AI model comes in three sizes: Ultra, Pro, and Nano, each catering to different levels of complexity and tasks.

Gemini Pro, set to be accessible to developers through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Google Cloud Vertex AI starting December 13, marks the beginning of a new era in AI development. The Nano version, designed for on-device tasks, will be available to Android developers through AICore, with plans for widespread support on Android devices in the future.

The ongoing experimentation and feedback process involve select customers, developers, partners, safety, and responsibility experts, with a broader rollout planned for early next year. Google intends to leverage Gemini across all its products, with applications starting on December 6, where Bard will utilize a fine-tuned version of Gemini Pro for advanced reasoning, planning, and understanding.