Demis Hassabis wanted to name Gemini "Titan" but Google lawyers said too aggressive
kevinroose · x · 2026-10-29
Kevin Roose is promoting his book The AGI Chronicles, and a reader-shared excerpt reveals Gemini naming trivia: Demis Hassabis wanted to call the model "Titan" after the Greek gods, but Google's lawyers deemed it too aggressive. They settled on Jeff Dean's softer suggestion, "Gemini" — a reference to twins and a merger of equals. The excerpt also notes Gemini made slow progress until ChatGPT's launch accelerated everything; Pichai prioritized tearing down walls between Brain and DeepMind, with Dean eager to return to coding and Hassabis more reluctant.
Related event: Book Reveals Hassabis Wanted to Name Gemini "Titan" Before Legal Veto(2 posts)→
More from Companies & People
- Will the masses stop thinking of Google as a search company within years? — mobileraj · 2026-10-29
- NISCO and Huawei deploy world's first swarm-intelligence industrial cluster for steelmaking — yogthos · 2026-10-29
- MATS Residency offers up to $285k and compute for full-time AI safety research — sethlazar · 2026-10-29
- Google engineer weighs OpenAI offer: $610K TC at $1.25T valuation vs L6 track — nian2326076 · 2026-10-29
- IIT Madras professor: kids need critical thinking skills for AI from an early age — ravi_iitm · 2026-10-29
- Rejected in the final round at Anthropic with 4 months of experience — full takeaways — EthanJPerez · 2026-10-29