In a Bloomberg interview Wednesday evening in downtown San Francisco, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pushed again in opposition to considerations that AI may finally make half the corporate’s 180,000-person workforce redundant. As an alternative, Pichai pressured the corporate’s dedication to development via 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 concentrate on extra impactful work. Slightly than changing employees, he referred to AI as “an accelerator” that can drive new product improvement, thereby creating demand for extra workers.
Alphabet has staged quite a few layoffs in recent times, although thus far, 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, a whole lot extra in its platforms and units 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 workers laid off final yr.
Wanting ahead, Pichai pointed to Alphabet’s increasing ventures like Waymo autonomous autos, quantum computing initiatives, and YouTube’s explosive development 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 assume 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 may erode half of entry-level white collar jobs inside 5 years, “I respect that . . .I feel it’s essential to voice these considerations and debate them.”
Because the interview wrapped up, Pichai was requested in regards to the limits of AI, and whether or not it’s attainable that the world may by no means obtain synthetic basic intelligence, which means AI that’s as sensible as people at every little thing. He rapidly paused earlier than answering. “There’s lots of ahead progress forward with the paths we’re on, not solely the set of concepts we’re engaged on right now, [but] a few of the newer concepts we’re experimenting with,” he stated.
“I’m very optimistic on seeing lots of progress. However you recognize,” he added, “you’ve all the time had these expertise curves the place you might hit a short lived plateau. So are we presently on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t assume anybody can say for certain.”
