With the artificial intelligence race moving so rapidly, even a momentary lag can be costly. Alphabet’s Google is learning this the hard way: The search giant rapidly caught up with OpenAI and Anthropic last year when it released Gemini 3, an AI model that surpassed key rivals on many benchmarks.

Now, it’s slipping behind on AI coding. The problem isn’t Google’s technology, but a confounding tangle of red tape.

The troubles are reflected in the big names who’ve left Google’s AI division in the last few months, including research icon Noam Shazeer, who helped invent the all-important transformer (the T in ChatGPT), and John Jumper, who won the Nobel Prize for his research into protein folding.

More recently, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, who both played key roles building Gemini, have left too. All have gone to Anthropic, except for Shazeer who went to OpenAI in what was seen as a major coup for Sam Altman.

AI labs are porous and their scientists jump between them with the frequency of fleas on cohabiting pets. OpenAI and Anthropic can also lure new recruits with stock options that could soar in value when they hold initial public offerings later this year or next.

But rock-star researchers like Shazeer and Jumper are already millionaires many times over and, in the world of AI, the prestige of being on the very frontier is a significant lure. The departures also accompany murmurs of discontent about Google’s........

© The Japan Times