AI Pioneer Francois Chollet Departs Google, Embarks on New Venture

AI pioneer Francois Chollet leaves Google

Francois Chollet, a leading figure in the AI world, is leaving Google after close to a decade. In a post on X, Chollet said that he's starting a new company with "a friend" -- but declined to reveal additional details. "I'm very grateful for my decade at Google," he said. "In that timespan, deep learning went from a niche academic topic to a massive industry employing millions." Chollet is perhaps best known as the creator of Keras, a high-level, open-source API that can be used to create AI models and solve machine learning problems. A post on Google's developer blog notes that Keras has over two million users, and powers a number of high-profile tech products, from Waymo's self-driving cars to the recommendation engines on YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify. In 2019, Chollet published the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus for Artificial General Intelligence (ARC-AGI) benchmark, which measures the ability of AI systems to solve novel reasoning problems. This year, he launched the ARC Prize, a $1 million competition to solve ARC-AGI. (It remains unwon.) In 2021, Chollet won the Global Swiss AI Award for breakthroughs in AI. And in September, he was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in AI. Chollet said that Jeff Carpenter, a machine learning engineer at Google, will taking over as team lead for Keras. "I have full confidence in Jeff and the incredibly talented Keras team to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible in deep learning," Chollet wrote in his post. "I will stay deeply involved with the Keras project from the outside."

Francois Chollet, The Man Behind Keras, Quits Google

Chollet introduced the ARC-AGI evaluation in 2019. This remains the only formal benchmark for AGI. Francois Chollet, a leading AI researcher at Google and the creator of Keras, the deep-learning framework, announced his exit from the company. Chollet took to X to share that he would continue to advise Google. Chollet's departure from Google marks a significant development. Other notable exits this year include Julian Schrittwieser, a leading AI researcher who left Google DeepMind to join Anthropic. Additionally, Shailesh Prakash, vice president of Google News, stepped down over growing AI and news traffic disputes. Last year, Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the godfather of AI, also parted ways with Google. "Today, we're announcing that Francois Chollet, the creator of Keras and a leading figure in the AI world, is embarking on a new chapter in his career outside of Google. Keras is more than just a tool -- it's a community driving AI innovation," Google posted on its official blog. "As Francais Chollet begins a new chapter, our commitment to Keras and open-source AI remains strong." Google noted that Keras has over two million users and has become essential in AI development. It simplifies workflows and makes advanced technology widely accessible. It supports applications like Waymo, YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify. Chollet was dedicated to Keras, ensuring its support for JAX, TensorFlow, and PyTorch, while continuing to guide its development. Google's commitment to Keras 3 highlights its support for major ML frameworks, offering developers flexibility. The launch of Keras Hub further democratises access to AI tools, speeding up the creation of innovative multimodal applications. Chollet introduced the ARC-AGI evaluation in 2019. His research paper 'On the Measure of Intelligence', aimed to fairly measure human-like intelligence in AI systems. His Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC-AGI) remains the only formal benchmark for AGI. He hypothesised that it would be difficult to beat, and it still remains unbeaten. Recently on X, Sam Altman hinted that they might have achieved this benchmark internally, however, Chollet disregarded this claim as premature. Earlier this year, he introduced the ARC Prize 2024, offering a $1.1M prize pool to advance AI innovation. In the first ARC-AGI competition in 2020, the winning team achieved only a 21% success rate. In 2022, Chollet and Lab42 launched ARCathon 2022, with 118 teams competing globally. In ARCathon 2023, 265+ teams from 65 countries competed, with two teams tying at a 30% success rate.