In a Bloomberg interview tonight, 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 a substitute, Pichai confused the corporate’s dedication to progress by not less than subsequent 12 months.
“I count on 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 mentioned, 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 to date, cuts in 2025 seem like extra focused than in earlier years. It reportedly parted methods with lower than 100 people in Google’s cloud division earlier this 12 months and, extra not too long ago, hundreds more in its platforms and gadgets unit. In 2024 and 2023, the cuts had been much more extreme, with 12,000 people dropped from the corporate in 2023 and not less than one other 1,000 staff laid off final 12 months.
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 frequently 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 mentioned attempting 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 recent comments that AI may 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 in regards to the limits of AI, and whether or not it’s potential that the world would possibly by no means obtain synthetic normal intelligence, that means AI that’s as good as people at every part. He shortly paused earlier than answering. “There’s numerous ahead progress forward with the paths we’re on, not solely the set of concepts we’re engaged on right this moment, [but] a number of the newer concepts we’re experimenting with,” he mentioned.
“I’m very optimistic on seeing numerous progress. However you understand,” he added, “you’ve all the time had these know-how curves the place it’s possible you’ll hit a short lived plateau. So are we presently on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t assume anybody can say for positive.”