What a longtime Google AI leader told UW computer science students at their graduation

Jeff Dean was a graduate student at the University of Washington in the 1990s, developing software compilers for object-oriented programming languages ​​inside a trailer strapped to an old computer science building.

On Friday evening, Dean returned to UW’s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering as Google’s chief scientist and co-leader of its Gemini AI models, with a message to the graduates about the technology he and his colleagues have created — and many of whom will soon contribute to places like Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia.

“AI is an incubator of ideas,” he said, “not a replacement for human intelligence.”

Speaking to a packed audience at the Allen School’s commencement ceremony at UW’s Alaska Airlines Arena, Dean told the graduates that AI technology can write code and summarize data, but it cannot replicate their knowledge, their behavior, or their sense of what needs to be done. Knowing what is important, he said, “can be your greatest strength.”

He did not comment on the state of the tech job market, but said they are graduating at an important time, when the world needs their fresh ideas and sharp thinking.

The Allen School’s choice of commencement speaker and his focus on AI might have been a risky proposition in a different context. But judging by the audience, there was cheering and applause — not the jeers or jeers that have dominated graduations across the country this spring.

It also helped that Dean’s message was clear and balanced. He acknowledged real concerns about technology, telling the graduates that strong development is responsible.

“We have to deliberately create safeguards and ethical boundaries,” he said, “so the technology benefits society at large, not a select few.”

He also made the case for AI as a force for good, citing its role in scientific and medical discoveries and predicting natural disasters. For example, he cited the use of machine learning to predict the extent of severe flooding in Somalia (where he spent part of his youth due to his parents’ work in global health), helping to protect communities.

He pointed graduates to problems that needed to be solved. In a paper he co-authored, he and eight others set out 18 milestones where AI can make a difference: improving health care around the world, giving every student a single tutor, building tools to flag false information, accelerating scientific discovery.

‘Be patient and persevere’

Dean’s path to Google was through the UW. He arrived in 1991 to study compilers under professor Craig Chambers, and completed his Ph.D. in 1996, and joined Google three years later, when the company included about 20 people working out of a former Palo Alto store.

On Friday, he found a trail of undergraduate students who studied in modern buildings named after the founders of Microsoft. Dean has fond memories of working in that cramped UW trailer, called “The Chateau,” along with other students who became lifelong friends and colleagues.

Be intentional about the people you keep around you, and stay in touch with them, she told the graduates, predicting that the relationships and memories they make at UW will shape their futures, too.

Dean and his wife, Heidi, were drawn to Seattle and the University of Washington in part by a brochure photo of the Drumheller Fountain set by Mount Rainier on a hot day. He joked that it was eight months before they got a good look at the mountain.

Earlier, as a senior at the University of Minnesota, Dean was interested in neural networks but found that they were not equipped at the time to deal with real problems. He guessed that the answer was more computing power, and he was right – it just took a little longer and a lot more than he thought. The technology requires a million times more processing power than computers had in 1990, he said, a threshold the industry didn’t cross until 2012.

Point to that: “Be patient and persevere,” he told the graduates. He said, something you learned a long time ago may allow you to do what you couldn’t do before.

Honor and respect

The UW’s Allen School awarded more than 800 degrees this year across its undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programs. The Friday evening event drew a crowd of nearly 7,500 students, families and faculty to the stadium.

Magdalena Balazinska, director of Allen School, opened the event by telling the students that it feels like yesterday that the school welcomed them. “I am happy that our future is in your active and loving hands,” he said.

The event featured the school’s commencement speaker, Vaishnavi Vidyasagar, a graduating senior from Sammamish, Wash. Computer scientists, he told his classmates, don’t just write code but open doors. His capstone project, for example, was a tool to help people with misophonia navigate the world of wonderful sound.

The evening also included the recognition of two former students and the Alumni Impact Awards: David Dawson, a 2006 graduate and founder of Ridwell’s first renaissance; and Nodira Khoussainova, a 2012 Ph.D. graduate who co-founded developer tool Streamlit and now leads co-working platform Focused Space.

The Allen School presented its alumni and faculty awards at a separate ceremony earlier in the day, recognizing excellence in career, scholarship, teaching and thesis work.

Dean closed his remarks by urging the graduates to spend their careers on what matters – using new tools to expand their ideas, and solve important problems. Equally important, he said, “treat people with respect and kindness at all times, and be happy in what you do.”