He sounds a lot like how some people behave when they reach a "top". Suddenly that thing seems unworthy all of a sudden. It's one of the reasons you'll see your favorite music artist totally go a different direction on their next album. It's an artistic process almost. There's a core arrogance involved, that you were responsible for the outcome and can easily create another great outcome.
Many researchers who invent something new and powerful pivot quickly to something new. that's because they're researchers, and incentive is to develop new things that subsume the old things. Other researchers will continue to work on improving existing things and finding new applications to existing problems, but they rarely get as much attention as the folks who "discover" something new.
Why "arrogance"? There are music artists that truly enjoy making music and don't just see their purpose in maximizing financial success and fan service?
There are other considerations that don't revolve around money, but I feel it's arrogant to assume success is the only motivation for musicians.
Sans money, it's arrogant because we know talent is god-given. You are basically betting again that your natural given trajectory has more leg room for more incredible output. It's not a bad bet at all, but it is a bet. Some talent is so incredible that it takes a while for the ego to accept its limits. Jordan tried to come back at 40 and Einstein fought quantum mechanics unto death. Accepting the limits has nothing to do with mediocrity, and everything to do with humility. You can still have an incredible trajectory beyond belief (which I believe this person has and will have).
Thinking about this again, what I was arguing is that I think artists focusing too much on (soon-ish) positive feedback can very easily fall into a trap and forget to explore their own possibilities because of that.
It's kind of similar to NN model collapse maybe? But I didn't want to switch to this topic. I deleted my original answer to your comment, because the philosophical (theological?) aspect invites very broad discussion and I tend to engage with things like this.
What I wanted to say might be along these lines:
Of course feedback with and the listener (or more general, the audience) is also required for art. In art itself, there is a spectrum between focusing on the self and focusing on the audience-or even, more generally, the "other".
And both halves of the spectrum harbour potential for good and bad art, respectively. It is a common topic in all kinds of art critique as well: idiosyncrasy vs kitsch for example are not synonyms for innovation vs stagnation, unpleasant vs. pleasant, complex vs. simple, etc etc.
It is especially interesting in this context to consider how the cultural consensus on appreciation of certain styles always has shifted. Yet, however inevitable this feels, cultural line of ideas and tastes at least used to be somewhat arbitrary until globalization slowly started to take hold: there are different languages, different standard forms and tropes, even different musical scales among the world.
Einstein also got his nobel prize for basically discovering quanta. I'm not sure he fought it so much as tried to figure what's going on with it which is still kind of unknown.
You know people get bored right? A person doesn’t have to have delusions of grandeur to get bored of something.
Alternatively, if anything it could be the exact opposite of what you’re describing. Maybe he sees an ecosystem based on hype that provides little value compared to the cost and wants to distance himself from it, like the Keurig inventor.
When you're overpressured to succeed, it makes a lot of sense to switch up your creative process in hopes of getting something new or better.
It doesn't mean that you'll get good results by abandoning prior art, either with LLMs or musicians. But it does signal a sort of personal stress and insecurity, for sure.
It's a good process (although, many take it to its common conclusion which is self-destruction). It's why the most creative people are able to re-invent themselves. But one must go into everything with both eyes open, and truly humble themselves with the possibility that that may have been the greatest achievement of their life, never to be matched again.
I wonder if he can simply sit back and bask in the glory of being one of the most important people during the infancy of AI. Someone needs to interview this guy, would love to see how he thinks.
Its also plausible that the research field attracts people who want to explore the cutting edge and now that transformers are no longer "that"... he wants to find something novel.
Or a core fear, that you'll never do something as good in the same vein as the smash hit you already made, so you strike off in a completely different direction.
