Just about everyone has a strong opinion on AI’s use and ubiquity, and Google’s CEO is no exception. In an episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, Sundar Pichai shared that he’s bracing for AI to impact “every product across every company,” and that the rest of society might want to do the same.
The episode was about the AI revolution as a whole, though Google was center stage. Google—and by extension, Pichai—has quickly become invested in the AI game, having worked on everything from an AI-powered kitchen robot to a ChatGPT competitor. When Microsoft brought ChatGPT to Bing, Google rushed to compete with the AI-enhanced search engine by rolling out Bard, which runs on Google's LaMDA language model. Now the two tech giants are engaged in a race to dominate everyday consumer AI.
Pichai told 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley that he expects AI to impact almost everything, regardless of industry. He gave the example of a radiologist who, in five to 10 years, might work with an “AI collaborator” daily. “Let’s say you have 100 things to go through. It may say, ‘These are the most serious cases you need to look at first,’” Pichai said. “Or it may pop up and say you missed something important.” He added that in another case, AI might help a student learn math or history.
“Why wouldn’t we take advantage of a superpowered assistant to help you across everything you do?” Pichai asked. Then he answered his question by touching on job security, saying “knowledge workers” like writers, accountants, architects, and software engineers will likely be disrupted by AI. Pichai also mentioned that AI will exacerbate the increasingly prevalent problem of disinformation and “fake news.”
Nonetheless, Pichai argued that AI might positively impact society—or at least a neutral one—because people familiar with it have worried about its implications since the beginning. This means conversations started early about how to mitigate AI’s adverse effects, including at Google itself, which has (supposedly) followed a series of AI guidelines since 2018. One way Google is working to reduce potential harm is by slowly releasing its AI products so that society and its own engineers have time to adapt to and improve their understanding of the technology.
“The development of this needs to include not just engineers but social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, and so on,” Pichai said. “We have to be very thoughtful. It’s not for a company to decide.”