Noam Shazeer (born ) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

known for his contributions to the field of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

deep learning Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...

, particularly in the development of

transformer In electrical engineering, a transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple Electrical network, circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces ...

models and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

Career

Noam Shazeer joined Google in 2000. One of his first major achievements was improving the spelling corrector of Google's search engine. In 2017, Shazeer was one of the lead authors of the seminal paper "

Attention Is All You Need "Attention Is All You Need" is a 2017 landmark research paper in machine learning authored by eight scientists working at Google. The paper introduced a new deep learning architecture known as the transformer, based on the attention mechanism p ...

", which introduced the transformer architecture. At Google, Shazeer and his colleague Daniel de Freitas built a chatbot named Meena. Following the refusal of Google to release the chatbot to the public, Shazeer and Freitas left the company in 2021 to found Character.AI. In 2023 Time magazine chose Shazeer as one of the 100 most influential people in the AI world. In August 2024, it was reported that Shazeer would be returning to Google to co-lead the

Gemini Gemini most often refers to: * Gemini (constellation), one of the constellations of the zodiac * Gemini (astrology), an astrological sign Gemini may also refer to: Science and technology Space * Gemini in Chinese astronomy, the Gemini constellat ...

AI project. Shazeer was appointed as technical lead on Gemini, along with

Jeff Dean Jeffrey Adgate Dean (born July 23, 1968) is an American computer scientist and software engineer. Since 2018, he has been the lead of Google AI. He was appointed Google's chief scientist in 2023 after the merger of DeepMind and Google Brain into ...

and

Oriol Vinyals Oriol Vinyals (born 1983) is a Spanish machine learning researcher at DeepMind. He is currently technical lead on Gemini, along with Noam Shazeer and Jeff Dean. Education and career Vinyals was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He studied ...

. It was part of a $2.7 billion deal for Google to license Character's technology. Since he owns 30-40% of the company, it is estimated he netted $750 million-$1 billion.

Views

Shazeer said about

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

that he doesn't "particularly care about AGI in the sense of wanting something that can do absolutely everything a person can do”. When asked in 2023 if he is afraid that AGI will destroy the world, he said: "No. Not yet. ..We’re going to work on it as the technology improves". When asked why do

large language models A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

work he answered: "My best guess is divine benevolence ..Nobody really understands what’s going on. This is a very experimental science ..It’s more like alchemy or whatever chemistry was in the Middle Ages.”

Personal life

Shazeer is an

orthodox Jew Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tran ...

. His grandparents escaped the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

into the Soviet Union and later lived some time in Israel before emigrating to the USA. His father, Dov Shazeer, was a math teacher who became an engineer and his mother was a homemaker. His sister was ordained as a rabbi by

Hebrew College Hebrew College is a private college of Jewish studies in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Founded in 1921, the college conducts Jewish scholarship in a pluralistic, trans-denominational academic environment. Its president is Rabbi Sharon Cohen ...

. Noam was born in Philadelphia and studied math and computer science at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

in the years 1994-1998. In Duke he got a math scholarship and, as part of Duke team, won prizes in several math tournaments. He started studying in a graduate program in

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California *George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to ...

but did not finish it. He is married to Yael Shacham Shazeer, who also works in Google, and father of three. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shazeer, Noam American computer scientists Duke University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 1976 births Google employees American Orthodox Jews American businesspeople American artificial intelligence researchers