Google’s Sundar Pichai presents his AI roadmap

Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai says artificial intelligence has been a core focus of Google parent since 2016, when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI was in its infancy. After all, Google researchers invented the “T” in GPT (as in Generative Pre-trained Transformer). This was an important innovation that made conversational search possible using large language models.

However, somehow, Google missed the big chatbot moment and has been playing catchup ever since. But Pichai, who sat down with Emily Chang for an exclusive interview with The Circuit, doesn’t seem worried. “We were not the first company to discover. We weren’t the first company to do email. We were not the first company to make a browser,” he says. “So I look at this AI as we are in the earliest possible stages.”

In other words, Pichai is playing the long game, and says Google — which dominates prime real estate on the Web — has plenty of time to win.

Google’s effort to reclaim the AI ​​microphone has nevertheless faced some obstacles. When the company unveiled its Gemini Image Generator in February, users immediately found vulnerabilities. Requests for depictions of historical scenes resulted in grotesque images of Asian Nazis and black American founders. The company’s efforts to ensure that its AI systems don’t perpetuate human biases have apparently backfired.

“We got it wrong,” says Pichai, 51, who says the incident was a case of good intentions gone bad. Google immediately shut down Gemini’s image creation feature to the public, with Pichai ordering a complete rebuild. “We’ve been retraining these models from the ground up to make sure we’re also making the product better,” he says. “As soon as it’s ready, we’ll get it out to the public. ” He predicted that the feature would be re-released in a few weeks.

Still, the future of search—and whether Google will maintain its dominance in that space—remains unclear. Next week, Pichai is scheduled to share his vision for the company’s future at Google I/O, the company’s annual developers conference. But in his interview with The Circuit, he gave us a preview.

Are we near the end of those “ten blue links,” as some pundits have predicted, as more conversational results from ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Cloud, and other chatbots become more mainstream? Pichai says the best form of search would include some combination of narrative answers and links to other websites to allow further exploration.

“My son is celiac, so we did a quick query to see if anything was gluten-free,” says Pichai. Often exploring a question “leads to more things and then you want to know more.” He says that meeting the diverse needs of a searcher is what makes Google unique.

Getting search right is essential to Google’s future, as ads placed among search results generate $300 billion in Alphabet’s annual revenue. “We have always found that people want choice, including in the commercial sector, and that is a basic need,” Pichai explains. “We’re experimenting with ads and the data we see shows those fundamentals will be true.”

It is also at the center of a landmark antitrust lawsuit in which the US Justice Department accused Google of abusing its market power to illegally maintain a monopoly over online search and related advertising. A federal judge is expected to rule on the case later this year, and his decision could have far-reaching consequences for Alphabet’s business and beyond.

But if Pichai is worried about the breakup of Alphabet, he does not express it. “People are trying to solve problems in their everyday lives,” he says. “Many of our products integrate in a way that provides value for our users.” The way Google is approaching AI is to “foster innovation, add choice to the market,” he says. “That’s how I think about it.”

In the meantime, Google has a lot of hurdles to overcome to reach its AI future. An increasing amount of AI-generated content is appearing on the Internet, and all search engines have to figure out is how to track, classify, and display it to users – or not. For example, last year Google’s algorithm inadvertently made an AI-generated “selfie” its top image for the search for “Tank Man,” the Chinese man who famously appeared in front of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square in 1989. Was standing in front. Google removed that image from its Knowledge Graph and Knowledge panel, but not before it gave people a new twist on history.

“The challenge and opportunity for everyone is: How do you get a sense of what is objective and real in a world where there’s going to be a lot of synthetic materials?” Pichai asks. “I think this is part of what will define exploration in the next decade.”

Generative AI is developing so rapidly that soon the large language models that spread information across the Internet will run out of material to feed. This will lead to a situation where models are turning to AI-generated data for training.

Pichai says, however, that there are ways in which models trained on synthetic data can lead to useful research breakthroughs. For example, Google created its AI system AlphaGo, which has been trained to master the Japanese board game Go, by allowing computer programs to play with each other. “On the field, you call it self-play,” Pichai says. “Over time, the notion has become, can you get models to produce outputs for other models to learn? These are all research areas now.”

Amid all the strategic challenges facing Alphabet, Pichai is also facing some skepticism from within Google’s ranks. Current and former employees have criticized his leadership style as too cautious and consensus-driven, part of the reason that Google gave ChatGPT the lead in AI, at least initially.

Pichai argues, “I think the reality is quite different.” “I think the bigger the company, you’re making less consequential decisions, but they have to be clear and you have to point the entire company toward that.” He says building consensus is important because “that’s what allows you to have maximum impact behind those decisions.”

Pichai has recently taken several steps to streamline the business to focus more on AI – including layoffs. Alphabet has gone through several rounds of cuts in divisions including hardware, engineering and the Google Assistant team.

Last month, Google also fired dozens of engineers who protested the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government, which Pichai called an unacceptable disruption to daily business. “It has nothing to do with the case or the topic they are discussing. It’s about his conduct, how he carried it out,” he says. “I see, especially in this moment with AI, there is a huge opportunity in front of us, but it requires a real focus on our mission.”

Microsoft Corp., with its big investments in AI startups like OpenAI, Inflexion and Mistral AI, has emerged as Alphabet’s biggest rival in the most frenetic tech cycle since the dotcom boom. Both are competing to win the AI ​​race, realizing that technology is key to the future of search – which is essential to the future of AI.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also said some objectionable words for Google. During a U.S. antitrust trial, Nadella testified that Google’s exclusive, multibillion-dollar deals with companies like Apple Inc. essentially locked out Microsoft’s Bing as the default on smartphones and browsers. Nadella argued that Google is able to improve its search engine because, as a default, it receives more user queries, resulting in better search results.

Pichai, meanwhile, says he’s trying to keep his focus and “not play to someone else’s dance music.”

“People focus on this micro moment, but it’s very small in the context of what’s going to happen next,” Pichai says. “When I look at the opportunities coming up, in everything we do, I put a lot of chips on Google, at least from my perspective.”

This episode of The Circuit with Emily Chang premieres Wednesday, May 8 at 6 p.m. in New York on Bloomberg Television, the Bloomberg App, Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg Originals YouTube channel. Check out The Circuit Podcast for an extended conversation.

–With assistance from Lauren Ellis, Julia Love and Davey Alba.

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