
The presentation by Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist of Google DeepMind and Google Research, provides an extensive overview of the foundational historical and technological shifts in AI over the last 15 years, tracing the path toward highly capable modern models. Dean discusses the necessity of scaling computation and model size, beginning with the genesis of Google Brain in 2012, and highlights key innovations spanning architecture and efficiency. Key developments covered include the invention of specialized TPU hardware to handle machine learning workloads efficiently and the creation of the groundbreaking Transformer architecture that significantly reduced required compute. Furthermore, the discussion addresses advanced training methods like sparse models and distillation and the necessity of reinforcement learning using human, machine, or verifiable feedback. Dean concludes by showcasing Google's recent Gemini models, which combine these advances to exhibit state-of-the-art multimodal performance, even achieving near gold-medal status on complex mathematical competitions.