AI may end up being bigger than the internet itself, says Google CEO Sundar Pichai
- Google is about to celebrate its 25th birthday but all its CEO can think about is AI.
- CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blogpost that AI "may be bigger than the internet itself."
Google is about to celebrate its 25th birthday this month in what should be a celebration of its revolutionary role in internet history. But its CEO can't help but think about how AI is about to be a much bigger deal.
In a blogpost on Tuesday, Sundar Pichai, who has led the company since 2015, said AI "will be the biggest technological shift we see in our lifetimes," one that "may be bigger than the internet itself."
Google has played a central role in how the web functions since its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to organize the world's information in a way that made it globally accessible.
However, the rise of generative AI since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT last year has left internet companies like Google scrambling to adapt as the technology has offered a radical new way of searching for information, among other functions.
Google has a long history of working on AI, particularly after acquiring London-based AI company DeepMind for more than $500 million in 2014, but the direct threat posed by a chatbot that answers questions for internet users put it on the backfoot earlier this year.
Google has been so startled by the impact of generative AI that Pichai issued a code red following the launch of ChatGPT last year, while veteran Brin has reportedly been frequenting Google's office a lot more this year to work directly on AI projects.
In the Tuesday blogpost, Pichai said AI represented a "fundamental rewiring of technology and an incredible accelerant of human ingenuity."
The company, which unveiled its own AI chatbot called Bard in February, is preparing to release an AI model called Gemini that is expected to rival the GPT model beneath OpenAI's ChatGPT.
"Making AI more helpful for everyone, and deploying it responsibly, is the most important way we'll deliver on our mission for the next 10 years and beyond," Pichai wrote.
A Google representative declined to provide a comment to Insider.