The rise of A.I. brings existential challenges, from job losses to misinformation and misuse. But for Google (GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai, the greatest risk is letting fear block its potential. “The biggest risk could be missing out,” he said at the AI Action Summit in Paris yesterday (Feb. 10).
Pichai acknowledged that it isn’t unusual to be wary about emerging technologies. “Every generation worries that the new technology will change the lives of the next generation for the worse—and yet it’s almost always the opposite,” the CEO said, recalling how he was initially uncomfortable when his children began using smartphones instead of logarithmic tables to learn math. “We must not let our own bias for the present get in the way of the future,” he added.
Google has long been a leader in A.I. Its DeepMind unit, for example, is the team behind AlphaGo, the A.I. system that shocked the world in 2016 by beating Go champion Lee Seedol in a five-game match. And two years later, it was a group of Google researchers that made revolutionized A.I. with “Attention is All You Need,” a paper introducing transformer-based models. Pichai noted that Google’s A.I. papers have been cited three times more than any other company or educational institution.
Pichai first joined Google in 2004, six years after its initial founding. “I couldn’t have imagined then that one day I would toast three Google colleagues their Nobel Prizes, or take my parents for a ride in a driverless car, all within a couple of weeks and all because of another technology,” he said.
In October, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, while former Google researcher Geoffrey Hinton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics—all thanks to their achievements in A.I. The Alphabet (GOOGL)-owned Waymo, meanwhile, made more than four million autonomous passenger drives last year.
What’s next for Google?
The company’s future A.I. endeavors include delving further into “deep research,” a feature Google began releasing at the end of 2024 that autonomously searches the web and compiles information for users. “You could ask a deep research agent, ‘Where in Europe should I vacation for two weeks in August?’ Five minutes later, you have a full analysis considering factors like affordability, weather, visa requirements and more—all with sources cited,” said Pichai.
Earlier this month, Google unveiled plans to spend an estimated $75 billion on A.I. investments this year. Combined with commitments from other major tech companies, A.I. leaders in Silicon Valley are expected to earmark $300 billion in capital expenditures for 2025.
Pichai also called for action to ensure that the world’s digital divide doesn’t cause A.I.’s capabilities to only benefit those with access to technology. He pointed to his childhood in Chennai, India, where new technologies like the rotary phone took years to arrive—but had major, life-changing impacts when they eventually did. “I think about how fortunate I was to have access to technology, even if it came slowly. Not everyone had that chance,” he said. “With A.I., we have the chance to democratize access from the start.”
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