Jonathan Richard Schwarz
Senior Research Scientist, Google DeepMind · Google · 2023
ResignedExplicitly stated
Evidence reviewed
What happened
Senior research scientist who left Google DeepMind in 2023 after seven years at the laboratory. In a September 2026 statement, Schwarz explicitly said concerns about the concentration of power represented by the major frontier AI labs caused him to leave DeepMind and later reject offers from the other two. His personal website confirms his former role and tenure, while his August 2024 departure announcement establishes that he left in 2023. Schwarz later pursued research and company-building outside the three leading frontier laboratories, including work on sovereign AI intended to broaden institutional control over advanced models.
Schwarz says he left Google DeepMind in 2023; the exact departure date is not publicly documented. He first publicly connected the departure to concerns about concentrated lab power on September 9, 2026.
“I left DeepMind after 7 years … due to severe concerns about the concentration of power these labs represent.”
Schwarz publicly connected his departure to concern about concentrated power in frontier AI labs. The statement was retrospective, made roughly three years after the departure.
Sources
Key Publications
- Thomson: Continual Learning of Frontier Models for SovereignAIarXivpreprint
Schwarz and his co-authors argue that frontier-model development is concentrated among a small number of highly funded organizations, creating information, economic, and power asymmetries. They present a continual-learning approach for adapting open-weight models across data, values, training, evaluation, and infrastructure, and report that it can make control of much of the AI stack feasible for a broader range of institutions. The work directly addresses the concentration concern Schwarz later cited when explaining his departure from DeepMind.
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