Sundar Pichai on A.I. Backlash, the Future of Work and Google’s Next Era

Sundar Pichai, welcome back to Hard Fork.

Sundar Pichai

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

The last time we had you on the show was in 2023. Bard, RIP, had just come out. I think at the time, the perception was that Google was catching up in AI. How are you feeling about your position in the race these days?

Sundar Pichai

Well, that brings back memories. It feels like eons ago. Those 3 years feel like a long time ago now. But I think it's staggering to see how much both the technology and we as a company have progressed. I think it's a very dynamic moment in the industry.

I think our models are at the frontier in some areas, and there are areas where we are behind the frontier. So it's a combination. If you look at overall capabilities, including text, multimodality, voice or audio, reasoning in general, and overall intelligence, I think we're very capable. When it comes to agentic coding with tool use, instruction following, and long-horizon tasks, I think we are a bit behind at this moment.

But we are hard at work, and the space is so dynamic. All of the leading labs have their own pretraining cycles, so you have these cadences, and they may not exactly match up. I think the moment is intense enough that if you're slightly off, 3 months ago people were like, “We are ahead, and no one could catch up with us.” And then now the conversation flips. But that's part of the territory of being at the frontier.

I think we're the only large company that's actually at that frontier, right? One way to think about it is that, in this moment, there are a couple of startups that have made extraordinary progress, and we've been deeply working on this for a long time. I think we took a big step forward with 3.5 Flash. It does address some of the areas where we've been behind, and obviously, getting it out in the real world and iterating with the data coming back is going to really help us.

Coding was the area where getting access to the data flows was important. I think we maybe didn't quite have the surface area—Claude Code, as an example, or what Anthropic maybe had with Cursor, too. And so, getting Antigravity 2.0—we've been using it internally at Google for a while. I shared the token usage at Google I/O. I've never seen anything like it internally, right? We are doubling every week, and people are really putting the models to work. So that is helping us climb quite a bit.

The frontier is very dynamic, but I'm very, very optimistic and confident we'll push through there.

It sounds like if there's any place where you feel maybe not quite at the very lead where you actually want to be, it is coding. Is that right? Is that where you're putting the pressure?

Sundar Pichai

Look, I think coding ends up being very foundational in everything we do. So I think it's an important frontier to be on. There are areas in coding where we've been very good. We've been very, very good at creating single-shot web front ends and everything, but in terms of these long-running tasks where serious developers are working on complicated codebases, I think we are making progress.

It's just that there's a gap to the frontier where others are. But we are working, we are well aware of it, and we're making progress there.

3.5 Flash has been out for a day. I do think it typically takes a few days to really put these models through their paces. We have seen some complaints, though, about pricing and model quality. I'm curious what you've made of the reception so far.

Sundar Pichai

I'm looking forward to being done with my interviews and so on so that I can spend more time with the teams.

Yeah, wrap it up.

Sundar Pichai

No. Look, we're going to meet the teams right after this. I'll take a day or two to settle in. I think it's a new model and a new area where we made some progress. There could be some regressions, but we'll be able to quickly address them through post-training, I think.

There are some artifacts and behaviors we are seeing that I think are easy to address, so we will. Given that it was a day after us putting out a lot of things, I think we had tightened usage limits to avoid outages. But you will see us make progress on usage limits very soon. That is rightfully a source of frustration when you encounter them. I feel the same, but those are areas we will address pretty soon and make progress.

It seems like one thing that some of the AI companies are succeeding at is focus. Anthropic and OpenAI have this relentless focus on coding. OpenAI was criticized last year for spreading its bets too thin, trying to do too many things all at once. They've now tightened that. Do you feel like Google is appropriately focused on coding, or are all the other bets you're making taking away resources, time, and focus from the main push?

Sundar Pichai

I think all of us saw there was an inflection point in coding, and I think we're all responding to it. We all have pretty serious stakes in this area. So I don't see this as an issue for us.

We are a large company and we have scale, so we'll be able to focus on multiple things at the same time. I don't see it as any fundamental issue so much as we are making progress. We're going to make progress. I think we are in a moment in time in this field where 30 to 60 days look like 5 years. That's all it is.

Yeah. Another thing that got a lot of attention this week was the changes you all made to the search bar and the front door of Google—the biggest change in 25 years. I think a lot of people expect that, at some point, the normal Google, the classic search interface, goes away; the 10 blue links maybe go away, and you just have this AI Mode as the default.

But you haven't done that yet. There's a lot of integration, but you still can get the 10 blue links if you want them. Do you think that goes away at any point—that you rip the Band-Aid off and just go full AI Mode?

Sundar Pichai

I think it's important to bring users along the journey, as well as making sure the product is working for their expectations. I try not to get ahead of that. I think it's very clear, as we've evolved through these changes, that people are responding positively. We can see it in the long-term metrics of the product in such a clear way, right? And so I think we understand that.

But people want search to be fast. I do think through search people are looking to connect with what's out there on the web, so that's important to us. So it's all of that. I think you're seeing us evolve the product, and I think you'll continue to see it be methodical.

We didn't have AI Mode a year ago, but now a lot of people are experiencing it. I think we made it more seamless to go there than before, and so it's a continuum. But I do think sources and links will always be there as part of it.

He was telling me on the ride down that he feels like he basically has not done a traditional Google search in the past year, that he's fully doing these AI searches. When you hear that, are you like, “Cool, this is the kind of user that I want right now”? Or does it send you a little chill because the traditional search ads business is a pretty good one for you?

Sundar Pichai

I think in AI Mode, in an agentic mode, these things are going to do a lot more for you than what we were able to do for users 10 years ago. I think the economic value is always a function of the total value you're giving users. All of us would say that, over time, the value we are providing users increases. There is more competition, and there are more choices.

So I feel comfortable that, between a combination of subscription and ads, the right models will continue to be there. Adam Smith's rules don't change in this new world.

Right. Let's talk about public perception. The New York Times CNN did a poll this week and found that only about 16 percent of people say that AI is mostly good, while about 35 percent say it's mostly bad. What do you make of the AI backlash that we're seeing right now? And how much leverage do you think Google has to change that perception?

Sundar Pichai

For me, AI is—I’ve always viewed it as the most profound technology humanity will ever work on. It's progressing at an extraordinary pace. Humans aren't evolved to process that much change. And people, I think rightfully so, are anxious about what future this technology will bring.

To me, I understand it. It feels natural with such a profound technology shift. We've had far simpler technology shifts where there has been anxiety around those shifts. This is of a scale unlike anything we've seen before.

I think we as an industry have to do a lot more to continue driving and showing the benefits that are possible with the technology. That is something in our control. We have more work to do to make sure that, when we are scaling up infrastructure investments and so on, we are asking what we can do to make some of that work better.

But I think people's concerns are a bit more fundamental around the shift than all of that.

Sundar Pichai

I think a natural part of this is that people are anxious about their economic future in this world. You have a lot of conversation where people are saying jobs are going to radically change, and some of it will go away. I happen to think the outlook is better than some of those dire predictions, but as a society, if you are hearing that, it's natural. I would be surprised if people weren't more anxious about it.

I do think it's important because the change is happening so fast. In democracies, you need people—you need citizens—to be engaged and aware that this is happening and make their preferences known. That's what causes action in society. So I think there's something healthy about this dialogue, too, which is happening, and given the pace at which the technology is moving forward, it seems right to me: both the concerns and the fact that we need to take it seriously.

You're giving the commencement speech at Stanford next month. I'm sure you've noticed or heard that a bunch of commencement speakers have been booed recently by college students who are worried about AI. What are you planning to tell the graduates about AI, and do you have your boo strategy in place?

Sundar Pichai

Anytime we have driven technological progress, I think it helps drive progress in the world. In some ways, these graduates are both going to be a big part of driving that progress and dealing with the impact of that technology. I think we have to be very mindful of that. I've always been extraordinarily optimistic about the next generation. I think we all have this view in the world: We are anxious, and we worry about the next generation, but I think the next generation rises to the challenge and builds a better world. So I view it as no different from those moments, and my goal would be to share my experiences with them. That's what I'm looking to do.

You just pretend they're saying “Google.” It's close enough.

I'd be curious to hear a little bit more about your case that, sure, jobs may change a lot, but for an entry-level graduate, the economic future is still bright. What is that case in your mind?

Sundar Pichai

On a basic level, I do think there's a new level of capability that all of us are going to have to be able to use to do things.

I'll say it: I didn't do it. I had no idea how to do it.

Sundar Pichai

I wasn't there when spreadsheets rolled out to people. I wouldn't know how you did financial analysis before that. How did people do it, right?

But spreadsheets changed that, and so there's an aspect of this where I think it is just going to change the starting point for many, many people. Even coding—I think if you fast-forward the progress we're seeing there, so many more people are going to be able to code in the world, right? I've heard you two might be examples of that in your journey. But I think you're just at the leading edge of what is going to happen more and more.

So I think those are the new, serendipitous ways this will all work out that we underestimate. I think people are going to be more productive. They will have more time for leisure. All of that will simultaneously be true.

There are so many areas where people's work today involves a lot. Doctors have high burnout rates, and it's because they train, and their calling is to spend time with patients, taking care of patients. But most doctors would tell you, if you actually watch how they spend their time, the percentage of time they spend with patients is less, right? So I think AI will actually help them do more of that.

The radiologist analogy has been fascinating. It's been running for a decade now. I look at myself and I say, “Well, I've gotten a lot more scans in my life than my dad ever did.” Each of the scans has 10 times the amount of information that his scans had because they were constrained by printing film, whereas ours are digital. I think that number is going to be 10 times higher in 10 years. So where is that projection going into? You're actually going to need AI to keep up with that demand, right? I think it's nonlinear how the impact of all this will be.

I don't want in any way to minimize the fact that every technology shift brings disruption with it. There will be disruption, and we as a society need to be super-serious about it and engage. Some of the conversations, I think, are rightful in thinking through that. But I do think there are many positive dimensions to it which maybe are not being talked about. And also, there are overly deterministic, dire scenarios that I don't quite agree with.

Let's talk about agents, because I feel like agents actually tie into this question of, “What is going to make us more productive in the future, and how will it change our job?” Later this summer, you're releasing Spark, which seems intended to be an agent for the regular person. I'm so curious to know: Could you walk us through something this agent is doing for you personally?

Sundar Pichai

I've used it a lot more in my professional context because it was mainly available in my corporate account. In that context, I've definitely used it—it's super easy to use it to prepare for any meeting. I wish I had brought the prompt and the output. As a test case, I used it for Hard Fork.

Honestly, if you email it to us, we would flash it on the screen.

Yeah, well, it had some things about the two of you, so I don't think I can project it.

No, that's what we want. Yeah, we want that. We want to know how it might drag us.

I'm not sure I'm allowed to do that, either. No, I'm just kidding—partially kidding.

So you used to see Casey's browser history.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Partially kidding, but I have had it in my personal account more recently. Here's a simple task I did. I asked it to look ahead at my meetings and color-code them by category so that I can keep a sense of how I'm spending my time. It's extraordinary to watch it. It came back with suggestions for 2 color-coding schemes, and I just had to choose 1. It changes the colors in the calendar: personal meetings, health-related meetings, time I'm spending at work, and so on.

That's an example of a personal query I just did to see what's happening, right? With agents, I think you have to give people a sense of control. I think about this as what allowed us to get someone to sit in the back seat of a self-driving car: We did it in steps. I think there's an element of that with agents where, if something unexpected happens, people will back off from this. Part of it is earning their trust. So give them a sense of control and transparency, but more importantly, from a security standpoint, these systems can be hacked, and so we want to make sure we are not ahead of the frontier in the wrong way.

Speaking of meetings and your calendar, we hear that you're headed to the White House for some kind of AI executive order signing. What should the government be doing right now to regulate AI? Do you like this idea of a kind of pre-release strategy, where the government gets to see models before they're released and sign off on them? Is that a good idea? Is that potentially dangerous if it gives them the ability to censor or jawbone companies into releasing different kinds of models? What's your take on that?

Sundar Pichai

Look, we'll have to wait and see the details of the full executive order, but they've engaged with the industry in a very robust way. I think the approach really balances innovation and oversight. We'll have to wait for the details to come out.

There are a few areas which are coming up. We will need more cross-industry government coordination. So it makes sense to me. Cyber is a great example of that. I think we all have to work together. It makes full sense to me that if you found an exploit which could impact a governmental agency, the government needs to be prepared for it.

So there is validity, but of course, we're doing it in a moment with this important technology where it's important as a country to be at the frontier, too—not doing it in a way where you're overly slowing things down. Maybe that balance has to shift as we reach more advanced levels of technology, but to me this seems like a prudent approach.

In general, part of what we are doing with building SynthID, open-sourcing it, and then sharing it with others, and more importantly, building a consortium together—I think it's an example of, in a different area, these things only work together if we can come together as an industry. So I'm glad they're approaching it in that way.

Yeah. Another safety-related question: All of the big labs are racing toward what you call recursive self-improvement, so building AI systems that improve themselves rapidly. Do you think that can be done safely? And do you feel like you have a line of sight to it right now?

Sundar Pichai

These models are getting better at coding and agentic workflows.

Sundar Pichai

And so, at some point, we did—you can see in Antigravity today, in over 12 hours, it can build a simple OS from scratch, right? And that is genuinely multiple thousands of hours for somebody to do, right? So you are seeing some of that in work today.

We all, in our products, in some version or the other, have agents and sub-agents in the orchestration of those agents building things together. It's a continuum, right? And I think we are all definitely making some progress. But in the way people describe recursive self-improvement, I don't think we are there yet.

That would represent a next level of acceleration, and I think it would have a lot of implications. But we aren't quite there yet.

Is there a plan for, “Oh, great news, we just hit recursive self-improvement”? Is there a sort of—do we break glass, or what happens then?

Sundar Pichai

It's a great example of, look, I think all responsible labs, if you're approaching moments like that, would be consulting with— it shouldn't be an internal conversation at that point. I think it has to be a much broader conversation than that. And I think we all have to avoid race conditions at those stages of AGI.

Right now, all the labs are racing to get more compute. There seems to be bottomless demand for compute. They're hoarding it wherever they can, striking deals, building their own data centers. Google is still selling access to TPUs to rivals and other companies in the race. Why? Why aren't you just keeping that for yourselves and your own models?

Sundar Pichai

I think each is not a constraint on the other, right? So as long as we can make enough chips, it's not a constraint. The right way to think about it is, we have Google DeepMind and our first-party services. You can think about that as a company business with cash flows, and you're planning for that. And then you have Google Cloud, which is a business with revenue and cash flows, and you're doing long-term planning for that.

So if you didn't have Cloud and we weren't providing [chips], we wouldn't be planning those chips anyway, right? And so that's the simplest level. You obviously know it's a bit more complex than that, but there are a lot of advantages to providing TPUs to others.

The fact that researchers at Anthropic are using TPUs, in addition to us, allows us to make the best hardware in terms of the next generation. And by the way, we use NVIDIA's chips, too, and their next-generation chips are incredible. And so we use those, and we work together, too.

When you're running platforms, you have a platform side of the business. I've always worked on many platforms in my life, be it Chrome, Android or Google Cloud. Why would you ever open-source something, or why do you provide this technology? All that makes sense on its own merits.

I do think there are advantages. Like I mentioned, it allows us to stay at the frontier. Economies of scale help in various ways, and so it makes a lot of sense that way.

Yeah. The last time we had you on, we asked you about AGI and your feelings about the term. At the time, you responded that it didn't really matter whether you've reached AGI or not, because the systems are going to be very, very capable, and Google's strategy should be the same.

I noticed that you did not say AGI in your keynote. Demis did, but you did not. What's your relationship with the term AGI today, and sort of the idea that all of this progress is building toward something singular and world-changing?

Sundar Pichai

There is inevitable progress toward AGI that's happening. I've long understood it, and otherwise I wouldn't have pivoted the company 10 years ago to put that technology at the heart and center of the company.

All I meant by that statement was, even in the scenario that AGI is going to take 10 years, the technology, 3 years out, will be so much more powerful than what we have today that I don't want people to think, because AGI is 10 years out, that you don't need to act or prepare. That is all my statement means in those contexts.

Are you AGI-pilled?

Sundar Pichai

Well, I absolutely am sure that the technology is making foundational progress toward AGI. I'm less able to predict with certainty whether it's in the 3-to-5-year time frame or the 5-to-10-year time frame.

The rate of progress over the last 1 to 2 years has made me feel it's on the closer side than not. In your role running one of the largest companies in the world, which has a responsibility to society, the language I choose to use around it might be different than other people.

But I think, as a company, 10 years ago, on the I/O stage, I announced TPUs and AI-first data centers. I clearly understood where this technology is headed.

Maybe as a last question, one of the more memorable phrases from the keynote this year did come from Demis, when he said that we're in the foothills of the singularity. Can you tell us concretely what that means from Google's perspective? And should people be excited about that, or afraid, or both?

Sundar Pichai

Look, I've had many conversations with Demis on this topic, obviously, and I think in this context he's defining singularity as the advent of AGI. I think he's talking in that context.

If I remember right, I think he had articulated it as being by 2030 or so. If you believe that, it makes sense to you. That's what you're articulating, and it's as simple as that. For him, that's how he defines singularity.

And I think Demis, myself and many others all feel it's important to—if that's what you believe, it's important to articulate that, because we're all at the frontier building this technology. Hopefully people are listening, and I think it's important that, as a society, we internalize that and get ready for it.

Sundar Pichai, thanks so much for coming.

Sundar Pichai

Thank you, sir.

Thanks. Great to talk to you.

Sundar Pichai

Appreciate it. Take care.