In an interview with Bloomberg in San Francisco, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gave a clear answer to concerns that hundreds of jobs will be lost to artificial intelligence. He said that AI will serve as an “accelerator” for the company — not to replace employees, but to increase their productivity.
- “AI is freeing our engineers from tedious tasks so they can work on powerful products,” Pichai said.
What do the numbers say?
While Alphabet is laying off 12,000 employees in 2023, the cuts in 2024 and 2025 are relatively small — only a few hundred people left Google Cloud and devices this year.
What does the company’s future hold?
Pichai is more concerned about AI’s job losses than its expansion into YouTube, Waymo (self-driving cars), quantum computing, and other areas. There are 100 million active channels on YouTube in India alone, and more than 15,000 channels have surpassed 1 million subscribers.
What did he say about AGI?
Pichai is cautious about the prospect of human-level artificial intelligence — AGI — saying, “The current trends inspire confidence in the future. But is it a sure path? No one can guarantee it.”
