Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks about employees joining OpenAI

Google’s parent company Alphabet announced its plans to cut about six percent of its global workforce, or about 12,000 employees, due to pressure from investors to reduce spending due to the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

talking to Bloomberg Regarding former Google employees joining rival companies like OpenAI, Pichai said, “Googlers have left to create more than 2,000 startup, last time I counted, and I think it’s pretty cool. Some of them are cloud customers for us. Some of them come back. I think it’s healthy.”

Pichai also talked about recent cost-cutting measures taken by many companies in Silicon Valley, including Google, saying, “Our work is towards sharpening our focus – I see this as sustainable work.” We are constantly trying to make the company more efficient.”

The Google CEO also acknowledged that his company’s generative AI-based chatbot Bard isn’t far behind the competition in some areas, while noting that these are very early days for the technology. He also talked about the competition in the AI ​​space, noting that he has long built Google to make AI native.

Pichai also talked about the risks posed by the new generation of AI-based technologies, saying, “We must ensure that we are focusing on the risks of bias or misinformation, security incidents, etc. There will be serious issues with deepfakes. We need to take this seriously.”

Several prominent figures in the artificial intelligence field, including Google and OpenAI, called for mitigating the risks of AI in a recent statement. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, along with other societal-level risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the letter reads.

Updated: June 14, 2023, 07:49 AM IST