In a Bloomberg interview tonight, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pushed again towards considerations that AI might finally make half the corporate’s 180,000-person workforce redundant. As a substitute, Pichai careworn the corporate’s dedication to progress via at the least subsequent 12 months.
“I anticipate we are going to develop from our present engineering part even into subsequent 12 months, as a result of it permits us to do extra,” Pichai stated, including that AI is making engineers extra productive by eliminating tedious duties and enabling them to deal with extra impactful work. Moderately than changing employees, he referred to AI as “an accelerator” that may drive new product improvement, thereby creating demand for extra workers.
Alphabet has staged quite a few layoffs lately, although to date, cuts in 2025 look like extra focused than in earlier years. It reportedly parted methods with lower than 100 individuals in Google’s cloud division earlier this 12 months and, extra not too long ago, tons of extra in its platforms and units unit. In 2024 and 2023, the cuts have been way more extreme, with 12,000 individuals dropped from the corporate in 2023 and at the least one other 1,000 workers laid off final 12 months.
Wanting ahead, Pichai pointed to Alphabet’s increasing ventures like Waymo autonomous automobiles, quantum computing initiatives, and YouTube’s explosive progress as proof of innovation alternatives that regularly bubble up. He famous YouTube’s scale in India alone, with 100 million channels and 15,000 channels boasting over a million subscribers.
At one level, Pichai stated making an attempt to suppose too far forward is “pointless.” However he additionally acknowledged the legitimacy of fears about job displacement, saying when requested about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s latest feedback that AI might erode half of entry-level white collar jobs inside 5 years, “I respect that . . .I believe it’s vital to voice these considerations and debate them.”
Because the interview wrapped up, Pichai was requested concerning the limits of AI, and whether or not it’s attainable that the world may by no means obtain synthetic common intelligence, that means AI that’s as sensible as people at every thing. He shortly paused earlier than answering. “There’s a number of ahead progress forward with the paths we’re on, not solely the set of concepts we’re engaged on in the present day, [but] among the newer concepts we’re experimenting with,” he stated.
“I’m very optimistic on seeing a number of progress. However you already know,” he added, “you’ve all the time had these expertise curves the place it’s possible you’ll hit a brief plateau. So are we at present on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t suppose anybody can say for certain.”
{content material}
Supply: {feed_title}
