In a Bloomberg interview Wednesday evening in downtown San Francisco, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pushed again in opposition to considerations that AI might ultimately make half the corporate’s 180,000-person workforce redundant. As an alternative, Pichai harassed the corporate’s dedication to progress by means of at the least subsequent yr.
“I anticipate we are going to develop from our present engineering section even into subsequent yr, 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 give attention to extra impactful work. Somewhat than changing employees, he referred to AI as “an accelerator” that may drive new product growth, thereby creating demand for extra staff.
Alphabet has staged quite a few layoffs in recent times, although up to now, 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 yr and, extra just lately, tons of extra in its platforms and gadgets unit. In 2024 and 2023, the cuts have been much more extreme, with 12,000 individuals dropped from the corporate in 2023 and at the least one other 1,000 staff laid off final yr.
Trying ahead, Pichai pointed to Alphabet’s increasing ventures like Waymo autonomous autos, 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 attempting 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 current feedback that AI might erode half of entry-level white collar jobs inside 5 years, “I respect that . . .I believe it’s necessary 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 doable that the world may by no means obtain synthetic basic intelligence, that means AI that’s as sensible as people at all the things. He rapidly paused earlier than answering. “There’s a variety of ahead progress forward with the paths we’re on, not solely the set of concepts we’re engaged on at this time, [but] among the newer concepts we’re experimenting with,” he stated.
“I’m very optimistic on seeing a variety of progress. However you realize,” he added, “you’ve at all times had these expertise curves the place chances are you’ll hit a brief plateau. So are we at the moment on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t suppose anybody can say for positive.”
