Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai on the A.I. Moment: ‘You Will See Us Be Bold’ - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/google-pichai-ai.html
Sundar Pichai has been trying to start an A.I. revolution for a very long time.
In 2016, shortly after being named Google’s chief executive, Mr. Pichai declared that Google was an “A.I.-first” company. He spent lavishly to assemble an all-star team of A.I. researchers, whose breakthroughs powered changes to products like Google Translate and Google Photos. He even predicted that A.I.’s impact would be bigger than “electricity or fire.”
So it had to sting when A.I.’s big moment finally arrived, and Google wasn’t involved.
Instead, OpenAI — a scrappy A.I. start-up backed by Microsoft — stole the spotlight in November by releasing ChatGPT, a poem-writing, code-generating, homework-finishing marvel. ChatGPT became an overnight sensation, attracting millions of users and kicking off a Silicon Valley frenzy. It made Google look sluggish and vulnerable for the first time in years. (It didn’t help when Microsoft relaunched its Bing search engine with OpenAI’s technology inside, instantly ending Bing’s decade-long run as a punchline.)
In an interview with The Times’s “Hard Fork” podcast on Thursday, his first extended interview since ChatGPT’s launch, Mr. Pichai said he was glad that A.I. was having a moment, even if Google wasn’t the driving force.