Jeff Dean, Head of Google Brain

Episode Overview

Among other topics, Jeff discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

• How Jeff’s role at Google (and the company itself) has evolved since he joined in 1999, and his current role as the head of Google Brain
• How Google resists organizational stasis and remains innovative, despite growing into a corporate behemoth
• Google’s vision for an AI first world, and how the company applies its fundamental AI research to improving and creating new products and service
• Trends in artificial intelligence such as open source software and conversational assistants
• Major challenges AI presents
• How companies in any industry can leverage artificial intelligence

Biography

Welcome to Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT. I’m Peter High, and I’m pleased to welcome Jeff Dean to the broadcast. Jeff is a Google Senior Fellow, currently leading Google Brain, the search giant’s initiative to build large-scale artificial neural networks. Jeff also leads the development of TensorFlow, Google’s open-source library of machine learning algorithms.

Jeff joined Google in 1999 and had a leading role in building much of the core technology and infrastructure of the company

Jeff earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota where he studied Computer Science and Economics. In 2009, Jeff was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and was also named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS).

I recently caught up with Jeff by phone at his office in Mountain View, California. Our conversation covered World Class IT principle, one, People, as we discussed how Google continues to attract, retain, and train top engineering talent; principle three, Project & Portfolio Management, as we discussed Google’s process for productizing its AI research and bringing it to market, and principle four, IT & Business Partnerships, as we discussed how Jeff determines who to interact with inside and outside the company. We also discussed Google’s vision for the transition from the mobile first world, to an AI first world, and how Jeff and the Google Brain team are building the infrastructure to bring this vision to life.

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