Demis Hassabis: Google AI CEO Demis Hassabis has a message for the engineer whose Googler buddy said Google is average at AI adoption: Tell your duddy to… | – The Times of India

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4 months ago

By TOI Tech Desk
Publication Date: 2026-04-14 10:25:00

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis fired back at software engineer Steve Yegge after a viral post claimed Google’s internal AI adoption was no better than John Deere’s. Yegge, citing a conversation with a longtime Google tech director, argued a hiring freeze and reluctance to use Claude Code had left the company stuck. Google’s Addy Osmani countered with numbers: 40,000 engineers doing agentic coding weekly.

When software engineer Steve Yegge published a lengthy thread claiming Google‘s AI adoption was roughly on par with John Deere—yes, the tractor company—the response from the top was swift and blunt. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, told Yegge to have his source “do some actual work and stop spreading absolute nonsense,” calling the post “completely false and just pure clickbait.“Yegge’s original thread, which went viral over the weekend, was based on a conversation with a longtime Google tech director. The core claim: Google engineers couldn’t lean into agentic…