Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the Next Phase of AI  ## Metadata - Author: [[Decoder with Nilay Patel]] - Full Title: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the Next Phase of AI - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/268b08c8-3675-443f-bc31-9152ca1af616 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **AI Research Becomes Reality** - Google is pushing the AI frontier deeply and broadly, moving research directly into real-world products. - This combination of deep AI research and productization gives Sundar Pichai confidence about Google's AI future. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Look, I think it comes from the depth and breadth of the AI frontier we are pushing, like in a more fundamental and foundational way. We spoke a lot about this theme called Research Becomes Reality, but it is, you know, always felt we are a deep computer science company. And, you know, we've been AI first for a while. So putting all that together and bringing it to our products at the depth and breadth is what I think it's really pleasing to see. For example, people may not have noticed it much. It was so quick. We spoke about text diffusion models in the middle of the whole thing. But we're pushing the frontier on all dimensions, right? And so Demis spoke about world models. So I think, to me, that's the exciting part, like how deep we are pushing this frontier and then bringing it to users. ([Time 0:05:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/590e5d64-0aaa-4ed9-b5a4-5aca480502de)) - **AI as a Self-Improving Platform** - The AI platform shift is transforming computing into a self-improving creative tool accessible to all. - This phase enables new forms of creation beyond past platform shifts like mobile or the web. Transcript: Nilay Patel You've said many times you think AI will be as profound as electricity. Yes. Over the past many, many years that you and I have talked about it. But you said something yesterday that I think adds to that, which is that we're in a new phase of the platform shift. Right? And people have talked about AI being a platform shift for quite a while. That always has meant to me that there's a user interface platform shift coming, right? We're going to interact with computers in natural language and more natural ways, and they will interact with us back in that same way and everything will change. Is that the platform shift? Sundar Pichai You are right. Each of these platform shifts, you know, changes many things on the IO front. Nothing to do with Google IO, just IO in the traditional computer science sense, you know, you could feel it. Yesterday when I watched the Android XR, I've used them and played around with them. But watching it, two people talking in different languages, you can envision the future one day where it'll actually be seamless. In a way, you couldn't have done it with phones. You couldn't have done it without AI because there's nothing in your way. You're looking at the other person and talking, right? And so that is an element of platform shift, but there are many more elements, right? This is the only platform where I think the actual platform is over time capable of creating and self-improving and so on. In a way, we could have never talked about any other platform before. So that's why I think it's much more profound than the other platform shifts. It'll allow people to create new things in a way, you know, because at each layer of the stack, there's going to be profound improvements. And so I think that virtuous cycle you get in terms of how you can unleash this creative power to all of society, be it software engineers, be it creators. I think that is going to happen in a much more multiplicative way. ([Time 0:05:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/95813656-33c0-4152-81f9-1b6f13db1e54)) - **Low-Code AI App Creation** - We are entering a phase where people will easily create AI applications with low or no code. - This phase will unleash a wave of new products much like the internet and mobile did before. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Imagine when the internet came, blogging became a thing. You know, pre-internet, very few people had a means by which they could put out their thoughts out to the world, right? You know, with the internet came a new medium, it allowed people to create and express themselves in a new way. With mobile came cameras and you could shoot and like, you know, you could create videos, you know, look at what's happened with YouTube. For me, the similar part of this is, you know, we're all talking about things like wipe coding. Yesterday you saw VO3, right? So we are now in that phase. I think people are going to be able to create AI applications, you can call it. But, you know, wipe coding, there are many names to it. But that power is yet to be unleashed. We're barely scratching the surface, right? And these models are now, aren't quite there. You can kind of do one-shot coding, but you really need to know, be a programmer to kind of go iterate and create something with polish, right? But that frontier is evolving pretty rapidly. So I think you're going to see a new wave of things, just like mobile did, just the internet did. ([Time 0:08:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/12d82852-316a-41c2-b852-6af86ebd6ca1)) - **AI in Healthcare Visits** - Sundar Pichai shared an example of AI in a doctor's office, where AI transcribes visits and generates reports. - This use of AI drastically improved the visit experience compared to two years ago. Transcript: Sundar Pichai I was recently in a doctor's office, and they do have AI kind of look at it, I mean, transcribe the whole thing, put it all in reports, and so on. That's an enterprise application layer. Kind of completely works different than when I went to that visit two years ago. ([Time 0:11:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d0f1b8ab-ed81-47b4-b54b-e3e8c57fb56f)) - **AI's Broad Business Impact** - AI is a horizontal technology impacting all Google businesses from search to Waymo. - The return on investment will build gradually as products evolve and gain traction. Transcript: Sundar Pichai In 2004, if you looked at Gmail, which was a 20% project, which people are internally using as an email service, you know, how would we be able to think about, you know, Gmail is what led Us to do workspace, get into the enterprise. I made a big bet on Google Cloud, which is, you know, tens of billions of dollars in revenue today. Right. And so my point is, you know, things build out over time, right? Think about the journey we have been with Waymo, right? And so I think one of the mistakes people make often in a period of rapid innovation is think about what is that next big business versus looking at the underlying innovation and say, Can you build something and put out something which people love and use? And out of which you do the next thing and create value out of it. So when I look at it, AI is such a horizontal piece of technology across our entire business. It's why, I mean, it impacts not just Google Search, YouTube, cloud, all of Android. You saw XR, et cetera, Google Play. Things like Waymo, Isomorphic, which is based on AlphaFold. So I've never seen one piece of technology which can impact and help us create so many businesses. And, you know, AI is going to be so useful as an assistant. I think that people will be willing to pay for it. We are introducing subscription plans. So there's a lot of, you know, headroom ahead, I think. And obviously, that's why we are investing, because we see that opportunity. Some of it will take time, and it may not be always immediately obvious. ([Time 0:12:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2a4f7ae9-21fb-4f85-8d22-b1617e3cb956)) - **Early Days for XR Glasses** - The XR glasses products coming soon won't yet be mainstream but will reach millions of users. - Seamless wearability is key, requiring hardware improvements especially for widespread daily use. Transcript: Sundar Pichai You know, it was a nice reflective moment all the way back from Google Glass. You know, wearing the product, I think there's a difference between goggles and glasses. Everyone at Virge understands this as well, but, you know, obviously we are also shipping goggles. You know, we have announced products with Samsung to come later this year. On the XR side, I think I'm excited about our partnership with Gentle Monster and Barbie Parker. We'll have products in the hands of developers this year. But I think those products will be pretty close to what people will eventually see as final products. So I'm excited. I think the pace is actually pretty palpable. So I'd be shocked if you and I were sitting next year. You know, I wasn't wearing one of that when I'm doing the... Nilay Patel Do you think that will be like a mainstream iPhone level replacement product? Because there's a lot of hardware that needs to get developed along the way to pull that off. Sundar Pichai You know, look, you're wearing something on your face. People like, I have prescription, right? And, you know, the bar is higher, I think, in terms of making the experience seamless enough that you're willing to wear it in your face and enjoy it for all. So I don't think Nestle next year is as mainstream as what you're talking about. But would millions of people be trying it? I think so. ([Time 0:15:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9a97dcc5-c694-43af-b718-81822d273066)) - **Web Growth Amid AI Evolution** - The web is expanding and evolving with more pages and creators, even amid AI's rise. - AI will enable seamless content format translation, increasing accessibility and consumption diversity. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Out the way that you thought it would? It depends. I do think people are consuming a lot more information. And web is one specific format, So we should talk about the web, but zooming back out. There are new platforms like YouTube and others too. So I think people are just consuming a lot more information, right? So it feels like an expansionary moment. I think there are more creators, people are putting out more content, you know, and so people are generally doing a lot more. Maybe people have a little extra time in their hands. And so it's a combination of all that. On the web, look, things which have been interesting and, you know, we've had these conversations for a while, you know, obviously in 2015, there was this famous, the web is dead. I always have it somewhere around, you know, which I look at it once in a while. Predictions, it's existed for a while. I think the web is evolving pretty profoundly. I think that is true. When we crawl, when we look at the number of web pages available to us, that number has gone up by 45% in the last two years alone. Nilay Patel Right? So that's a staggering thing to think about. Can you detect if that number, if that volume increase is because more pages are generated by AI or not? This is the thing I may be aware of the most, right? Sundar Pichai It's a good question. We generally have many techniques in search to try and understand the quality of a page, including whether it was machine generated, et cetera. This trend, that doesn't explain this trend we are seeing, right? So, genuinely, there are more web pages. So, you know, at an underlying level, so I think that's an interesting phenomenon. I think everybody as a creator, like you do at Verge, I think today if you're doing stuff, you have to do it in a cross-platform, cross-format way. You know, I look at the quality of video content you put out. It's very sophisticated, right, you know, and very different from how Verge used to be maybe five to 10 years ago, right? It's profoundly changed. So I think things are becoming more dynamic cross-format. I think the thing, another thing people are underestimating with AI is AI will make it zero friction to move from one format to another, right? Because our models are natively multimodal. We kind of tease people's imagination with audio overviews in Notebook Ella. The fact you can throw a bunch of documents at it, and you have a podcast and you can join and learn from it. So I think this notion, the static moment of like, you produce content by format, whereas I think machines can help translate it from almost like different languages and they can go Seamlessly between. I think it's one of the incredible opportunities to be unlocked right ahead. And so maybe I didn't want to drift from the question we were having, but I think people are producing a lot of content and I see consumers consuming a lot of content. And, you know, we see it in our products. ([Time 0:20:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/73da9181-2b4a-4ccd-8b70-cec24473456f)) - **AI Mode and Web Traffic Growth** - Google AI Mode will continue sending substantial traffic to the web, providing sources for users to explore. - Sundar Pichai believes critics underestimate how Google sustains traffic to external websites. Transcript: Nilay Patel Know, the publishers, as they often do, responded to Google I.O. Announcements. So the News Media Alliance, after AI Mode was announced yesterday, I would say they're very upset. Here's a statement from the president of the News Media Alliance. Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google takes content by force and uses it with no return, no economic return. That's the definition of theft. And they go on to say the DOJ lawsuits must address it. That's pretty furious. That's not a negotiation, right? That's a, we just want this to stop. How do you respond to that very loud set of people who say, yeah, okay, maybe it's growing somewhere, but for us, it's crushing our businesses. Sundar Pichai First of all, through all the products, I mean, AI mode is going to have sources and, you know, we're very committed as a direction, as a product direction to make, I think, part of why People come to Google is to experience that breadth of the web and go in the direction they want to, right? So I view us as giving more context. Yes, there are certain questions which may get answers, but overall, that's the pattern we see today. Right. And if anything over the last year, it's clear to us the breadth of where we are sending people to is increasing. And so I expect that to be true with AI mode as well. Nilay Patel But if it was increasing, wouldn't they be less angry with you? Sundar Pichai You're always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, et cetera, right? Like app developers and platforms that's not on the web, et cetera, right? It's inherently, you know, there's always going to be, when you're running a platform, these debates. I would challenge, I think, more than any other company. We think about, we prioritize sending traffic to the web. No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do. I look at other companies, newer emerging companies, they openly talk about it as something they are not going to do. We are the only ones which make it a high priority, agonize, and so on. Look, we'll engage. And we've always engaged. There are going to be debates through it all, But we are committed to, you know, I've said this before, everything we do, you will see us five years from now sending a lot of traffic out To the web. ([Time 0:25:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d9b94148-4766-47d9-878b-504baf9bfe25)) - **Search Queries Still Growing** - Google sees continued overall search query growth, including on Apple devices. - New formats like AI Overviews expand user engagement rather than reduce it, making search non-zero-sum. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Look, we've been very clear. We are seeing overall query growth in search. You know, it looks... But have you actually seen the drop in Safari? We have a comprehensive view of how we look at data across the board. There can be a lot of noise in search data, but everything we see tells us we are seeing query growth, including across Apple's devices and platforms. And specifically, you know, I think we quantified the query growth from AI overviews. And what's healthy is that the query growth is continuing to grow over time. This is what I've said before. It feels very far from a zero-sum game to me. I said this last year. It's interesting we spoke about TikTok, right? Think about how profound a new product TikTok was. How has YouTube done since TikTok has come? You could ask all these questions there. Why is it that TikTok comes and YouTube has grown? And so I think what we always underestimate in these moments is people are engaging more, doing more with it. We are improving our products. So that's how I would think about these moments. ([Time 0:30:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b931dff7-9754-435a-b5aa-00c0d19bcc93)) - **Agents and the Web's Database Nature** - The web is fundamentally a series of databases, with user interfaces built to consume them. - Enterprises may adopt agent-first web experiences more quickly, while consumer adoption will evolve through value dynamics. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Things, though. First, there's a lot to unpack. It's a fascinating topic. The web is a series of databases, et cetera. We build a UI on top of it for all of us to consume. This is exactly what I wanted, is the web is a series of databases. It is. But I listened to the Demis Sergey conversation yesterday. I enjoyed it. I think he's saying for an agent-first web, for a web which is interacting with agents, you would think about how to make that process more efficient. Today you're running a restaurant people are coming dining and eating and people are ordering takeout and delivery. Obviously for for you to service that takeout you would think about it different than all the tables and the clothing and the furniture and the like you know so but both are important To you. You could be a restaurant which decides I'm not going to participate in the takeout business. I'm only going to focus on the dining experience. You're going to have some people vice versa. I'm going to say, I'm going to go all in on this and run a different experience. A new powerful format. I do think it'll happen in enterprises faster than consumer, because in the context of an enterprise, you have a CIO who's able to go and say, I really don't know why these two things don't Talk to each other. I'm not going to buy more of this unless you interoperate with this. I think partly why you see on the enterprise side a lot more authentic experiences. On the consumer side, I think what you're saying is a good point, right? People have to think about and say, what is the value for me to participate in this world? And it could come in many ways. It could be because I participate in it and overall my business grows, right? Some people may feel that it's disintermediating, right? And like, it doesn't make sense. All of that can happen, but users may vote with their feet, right? Like, you know, you may find some people are supporting the agent experience and your life is better because of it. And so you're going to have all these dynamics and like, you know, and I think they're going to try and find an equilibrium somewhere. ([Time 0:33:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5995c11a-d2d1-4848-904a-866cf5eb65e9)) - **Emerging Agent Economics** - New economic models could emerge allowing consumers to pay subscription fees to agents that share revenue with businesses. - Lowering friction and improving user experience motivate participation in agent ecosystems. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Right? All kinds of models may emerge, right? I can literally see 20 different ways this could work. Consumers could pay a subscription for agents and the agents could rev share back. All right. So, you know, so that is a CIO like use case you're talking about. That's possible. We can't rule that out. I don't think we should underestimate people may actually see more value participating in it. You know, it's tough to predict, but I do think over time, like if you're removing friction and improving user experience, you tough to bet against those in the long run. And so I think if in general you're lowering friction for it and people are enjoying using it, somebody is going to want to participate in it and grow their business. And would brands want to be in retailers? Why don't they sell directly today? Why won't they do that? Because retailers provide value in the middle. Why do merchants take credit cards? I'm just saying. There are many parts. And you find equilibrium because merchants take credit cards because they see more business as part of taking credit cards than not, right? And it justifies the increased cost of taking credit cards. It may not be the perfect analogy, but I think there are all these kinds of effects going around. But what you're saying is true. Some of this will slow progress in agents just because we all are excited about A2A and MCP. And we think, no, like of it will slow progress. ([Time 0:37:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6fc7581-1304-491f-9479-7d4d9a5d61cc)) - **Search Ranking Integrity** - Google search rankings are protected from individual or political influence to preserve integrity. - Broad systemic improvements are made based on feedback, not case-by-case adjustments. Transcript: Sundar Pichai No. Today, the way Google search works is I cannot, no person in Google can influence the ranking algorithm. Nilay Patel AI mode is different, right? We've seen system prompts adjusted in very chaotic ways from some of your competitors. Is that something that you would be open to in a world where you're serving the full answer? Would you adjust the AI mode responses in response to political pressure? Sundar Pichai No. Nilay Patel Because we've seen, certainly in Grok and others, that system prompts change the answers in dramatic ways. Sundar Pichai The way we do ranking is sacrosanct to us. We've done it over 25 years. We make a lot of ranking signals we take into account and stuff. And if there's broad feedback from people that something isn't working, we will look at it systematically and try and make changes. But we don't look at individual cases and ever change ranking. ([Time 0:40:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4e99b1f9-fdcd-47e9-96f6-ada3c755b3d0)) - **Accountability in AI Synthesis** - Google anchors AI-generated answers in trusted sources and maintains a high accuracy bar. - Accountability and user trust remain central as AI synthesis expands in search results. Transcript: Nilay Patel As you synthesize more of the answers, do you think you're going to have to take more responsibility for the results? Sundar Pichai Look, we are giving context around it, but we are still anchoring it in the sources we find. But we've always felt a high bar in Google. Last year, when we launched AI Overviews, I think people are adversely querying to find errors. And the error rate was one in seven million for adversarial queries. And so, but that was a big, but that's the bar we've always operated as a company. And so, I think to me, nothing has changed. Like, you know, Google operates under a very high bar. That's the bar we strive to meet. And, you know, our search page results are there for everyone to see. But that comes that natural accountability. ([Time 0:42:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/098b57b2-9a97-4699-8848-71bc83c2a6c4)) - **Future AI Shift: Robotics Integration** - The next big AI platform shift will be the integration of AI with robotics in everyday physical environments. - This will transform how we interact with technology beyond online experiences. Transcript: Sundar Pichai Of the platform shift, you mean? Yeah. Of the AI platform? Nilay Patel What are you looking for as the next marker? Sundar Pichai The real thing about AI, which I think why I've always called it more profound is, you know, self-improving technology, right? And, you know, having watched AlphaGo, you know, start from scratch, not knowing how to play Go. And, you know, within a couple hours or four hours be better than top level human players. And in eight hours, you know, no human can ever ask for it to play against it, right? So, and that's the essence of the technology, obviously, in a deep way. So I think, look, I think there's so much ahead on the opportunity side. You know, I'm blown away by the ability to discover new drugs, you know, completely change how we treat diseases like cancer over time, et cetera. You know, the opportunity is there. The creative power, which I talked about, which we're putting in everyone's hands. I think the next generation of kids, everyone can program and build. If you think of something, you can create it. I don't think we have comprehended what that means, but that's going to be true. The part which the next phase of the shift, which is going to be really meaningful is when this translates into the physical world through robotics, right? So that aha moment of robotics, I think when it happens, that's going to be the next big thing we will all grapple with. Today, they're all online and you're doing things with it. But on one hand, today, I think of Waymo as a robot. So we are running around, driving around a robot, but I'm talking more general purpose robot. And when AI creates that magical moment with robotics, I think that'll be a big platform shift as well. ([Time 0:43:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7b66743-7373-4dac-ad04-265af9c0aac6))