Googles Transformers 8 Pioneer Illia Polosukhin Aims to Democratize Artificial Intelligence

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Before leaving Google in 2017, Ilya Polosukhin had a brainstorming lunch and then went back to his desk to build something that could be the first transformer, even if generating artificial intelligence became possible neural network architecture. Now, Polosukhin is considered one of the founders of modern artificial intelligence. Polosukin and seven of his colleagues at Google co-authored the now famous 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which they collectively called “Transformers 8.” The seven of them first appeared together at the annual Nvidia Developer Conference in March, where CEO Huang Renxun said, “Everything we enjoy today can be traced back to that moment.”
On March 20, 2024, the seven “Transformers 8” joined Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun at the GTC, Nvidia’s annual developer conference in San Jose. From left to right: Lucas Kaiser, Norm Schaller, Aidan Gomes, Huang Renxun, Leon Jones, Jacob Uscorrett, Ashish Vasswani, and Ilya Polosukhin. Nvidia
Polosukhin said that Google started using transformers in Google Translate in 2018, which brought “huge improvements.” However, it wasn’t until November 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, that the technology was widely used. Polosukhin told CNBC, “There was almost no loss after open-sourcing artificial intelligence.” “For example, if any other company, especially a public company, opens it up, the first question you ask is, like, an inappropriate answer, it will appear in the news.” By the end of 2017 when the influential paper was published, Polosukhin had already left Google and, along with software engineer Alexander Skidanov, co-founded his own artificial intelligence company, Near. Although Polosukhin was the first to leave, all eight authors have since left Google. “Google’s research is an amazing environment,” Polosukhin said. “It’s good for learning and this kind of research. However, if you want to act quickly, and more importantly, put something in front of the user, then Google is a big company with a lot of processes, of course, security protocols, etc.” In the end, he said, “For Google, launching an idea that isn’t $1 billion doesn’t make sense.” When he was at Google, Polosukhin was an open-source supporter. He said, “At the time, opening it up and letting everyone build on it was the right decision.” At Near, Polosukhin focuses on what he calls AI that users own, “optimizing users’ privacy and sovereignty.” Watch the full conversation between CNBC’s Katie Tarasov and Illia Polosukin.