AI Mafia Network – an Interactive Visualization

Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago

dipakwani

109 points

9 comments

dipakwani.comTechstory

calmmixed

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Artificial IntelligenceGoogleNetwork Visualization

Key topics

Artificial Intelligence

Google

Network Visualization

The author created an interactive visualization of the 'AI Mafia' network, showing how Google's early AI efforts influenced current companies, sparking discussion on the visualization's design and representation.

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01Story posted
Oct 26, 2025 at 6:54 PM EDT
2 months ago
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Oct 26, 2025 at 6:54 PM EDT
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Oct 27, 2025 at 11:22 AM EDT
2 months ago
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Discussion (9 comments)

Showing 9 comments

dipakwaniAuthor

2 months ago

1 reply

After listening to the Acquired podcast episode on Google AI, I wanted to map how many of today’s major AI players have their roots in Google. I built a network-style flowchart that visualizes this “AI Mafia”.

The goal was to map how deeply Google’s early AI efforts radiated towards current companies, viz, OpenAI, DeepMind, Cohere, etc. Each node links people and organizations mentioned in the episode, with logos for clarity.

There is still some UX work that can be done. Do explore the graph and I am sure you would also be interested in seeing the PayPal Mafia playing an important role, and how so many logos link back to Google (Brain).

Edit: Podcast link: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google-the-ai-company

amelius

2 months ago

1 reply

Do you have a link to the podcast?

dipakwaniAuthor

2 months ago

Sure: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/google-the-ai-company. Added in the credits(hamburger) menu as well.

sghiassy

2 months ago

1 reply

What’s the underling framework/website used to make the mind map?

dipakwaniAuthor

2 months ago

2 replies

I created the map as an Obsidian canvas. (It is stored as a json file internally). I am using https://js.cytoscape.org/ to render this json file on the website.

I tried out of the box obsidian canvas publishers, but they did not work. Hence the misaligned nodes.

sghiassy

2 months ago

Good stuff! Thx :)

scottydelta

2 months ago

https://kumu.io

This is a popular and an old platform to make network graphs

thro1

2 months ago

Can't say about the content so far as I can't read it - letters are to small (so much space wasted in that boxes, still clip letters) and with browser zoom 200% blurry (on 27" 4k), using that page special zoom can't see the whole picture - neither scroll it with my Scrollpoint mouse beacuse now it's zooming :(

Why I'm forced to interact with it in some unusual way, instead of let me just have a look or print it - is it made in such way for some purpose (document programmer has some, but no DTP/design skills - so DIY) ?

hbarka

2 months ago

The PayPal “mafia” is cringey enough already, please enough of this word to describe a cabal.

You’re also missing women in this graph, there are women.

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ID: 45715819Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 12:11:26 PM

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