Sundar Pichai Counters AI Job Loss Fears—Here’s Why He’s Optimistic –
This is happening during a new discussion about how AI affects jobs, which was triggered by the warning from the CEO of Anthropic that AI might eliminate half of the entry-level positions by 2030.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, claims that AI won’t take over jobs, despite many in the tech world thinking differently.
Pichai, who is also in charge of Google’s parent company Alphabet, mentioned that AI tools will help engineers become more efficient and allow them to concentrate on more significant tasks by handling boring work. He shared this opinion during his talk at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco this week.
This statement comes during an ongoing discussion about how AI affects jobs, which was reignited when Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, warned that the technology could eliminate half of all entry-level jobs in the next five years. In reaction to Amodei’s comments, Pichai responded, “I respect that… I think it’s crucial to express those worries and discuss them.”
For the past 20 years, we’ve been making predictions about technology and automation, but it hasn’t really turned out that way,” he said. When asked if AI could eventually render half of the company’s 180,000 employees unnecessary, Pichai responded, “I believe we will continue to expand from our current engineering stage into next year, as it enables us to accomplish more.”
Pichai has also pointed out that more than 30 percent of Google’s code is generated by AI. Still, he describes AI as an ‘accelerator’ that will help in developing new products and increase the need for more workers. So far in 2025, Google has let go of about 100 employees from its cloud division. This is a much smaller number compared to when the company laid off 12,000 jobs and 1,000 jobs in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
What else did Pichai mention?
Regarding the limitations of AI and the possibility of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is an AI system that can perform tasks as well as or better than humans, Pichai stated, “There’s a lot of forward progress ahead with the paths we are on, not only the set of ideas we are working on today, [but] some of the newer ideas we are experimenting with.”
“I’m very optimistic about seeing a lot of progress. But you know, there have always been these technology curves where you might hit a temporary plateau. So are we currently on a definite path to AGI? I don’t think anyone can say for sure,” he continued.
Pichai also expressed optimism about other technologies and innovations, including Alphabet-owned Waymo’s self-driving cars, Google’s quantum computing projects, and the rapid growth of YouTube in countries like India.
Sources – Indian Express
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