Sundar Pichai: CEO of Google and Alphabet | Lex Fridman Podcast #471

There was a 5-year waiting

list and we got a rotary telephone, but

it dramatically changed our lives. You

know, people would come to our house to

make calls to their loved ones. You

know, I I would have to go all the way

to the hospital to get blood test

records and it would take 2 hours to go

and they would say, "Sorry, it's not

ready. Come back the next day." 2 hours

to come back. And that became a

five-minute thing. So as a kid like I

mean this light bulb went in my head you

know this power of technology to kind of

change people's lives. We had no running

water you know it was a massive drought.

So they would get water in these trucks

maybe eight buckets per household. So me

and my brother sometimes my mom we would

wait in line get that and bring it back

home.

many years later like we had running

water and we had a water heater and you

could get hot water to take a shower. I

mean like so you know for me everything

was discreet like that. Uh and so I've

always had this thing you know firsthand

feeling of like how technology can

dramatically change like your life and

like the opportunity it brings. I think

if pedom is actually high at some point

all of humanity is like aligned in

making sure that's not the case right

and so we'll actually make more progress

against it I think so the irony is so

there is a

self-modulating aspect there like I

think if humanity collectively puts

their mind to solving a problem whatever

it is I think we can get there so

because of that I think I'm optimistic

on the pdoom scenarios

But that doesn't mean I think the

underlying risk is actually pretty

high. But I'm uh you know I have a lot

of faith in humanity kind of rising up

to the to meet that moment. Take me

through that experience when there's all

these articles

saying you're the wrong guy to lead

Google through this. Google is lost.

It's done. It's over.

The following is a conversation with

Sundar Pachai, the CEO of Google and

Alphabet on this the Lex Freedman

podcast. Your life story is inspiring to

a lot of people. It's inspiring to me.

You grew up in India, whole family

living in a humble two- room apartment

very little, almost no access to

technology. And from those humble

beginnings, you rose to lead a $2

trillion technology company. So if you

could travel back in time and told that

let's say, 12-year-old Sundar that

you're now leading one of the largest

companies in human history, what do you

think that young kid would say? I would

have probably laughed it off. Um, you

know, uh, probably too far-fetched to

imagine or believe at that time. You

would have to explain the internet first

for sure. I mean computers to me at that

time. You know I was 12 in

1984. So probably uh you know by then I

started reading about

them. I had seen one. What was that

place like? Take me to your childhood.

You know I grew up in Chennai. Uh it's

in south of India. It's a beautiful

bustling city. Lots of people, lots of

energy, you know, simple life.

Definitely like fond memories of playing

cricket outside the home. We just used

to play on the streets. All the

neighborhood kids would come out and we

would play till it got dark and we

couldn't play anymore barefoot. Um

traffic would come, we would just stop

the game, everything would drive through

and you would just continue playing

right? Just to kind of get the visual in

your head. You know, precomputers

there's a lot of free time now. Now that

I think about it, now you have to go and

seek that quiet solitude or something.

Newspapers, books is how I gained access

to the was information at the time, you

will. Uh my grandfather was a big

influence. He worked in the post office.

He was so good with language. His

English, you know, his handwriting till

today is the most beautiful handwriting

I've ever seen. He would write so

clearly. He was so articulate.

And so he kind of got me introduced into

books. He loved politics. So we we could

talk about anything and you know that

was there in my family throughout. So uh

lots of books, trashy books, good books

everything from iron rand to books on

philosophy to stupid crime novels. So

books was a big part of my life. But

that kind of this soul it's not

surprising I ended up at Google because

Google's mission kind of always

resonated deeply with me this access to

knowledge I was hungry for it but

definitely have you know fond memories

of my childhood access to knowledge was

there so that's the wealth we had

uh you know every aspect of technology I

had to wait for a while I've obviously

spoken before about how long it took for

us to get a phone about 5 years but it's

not the only thing a telephone. There

was a 5-year waiting list. Uh and we got

a rotary uh telephone. Mhm. But it

dramatically changed our lives. You

know, people would come to our house to

make calls to their loved

ones. You know, I I would have to go all

the way to the hospital to get blood

test records and it would take 2 hours

to go and they would say, "Sorry, it's

not ready. Come back the next day." 2

hours to come back. And that became a 5m

minute thing. So as a kid like I mean

this light bulb went in my head you know

this power of technology to kind of

change people's lives. We had no running

water you know it was a massive drought.

So they would get water in these trucks

maybe eight buckets per household. So me

and my brother sometimes my mom we would

wait in line get that and bring it back

home.

many years later like we had running

water and we had a water heater and you

could get hot water to take a shower. I

mean like so you know for me everything

was discreet like that. Uh and so I've

always had this thing you know firsthand

feeling of like how technology can

dramatically change like your life and

like the opportunity it brings.

So, you know, that was kind of a

subliminal takeaway for me throughout

growing up. And, you know, I I kind of

actually observed it and felt it, you

know. So, we had to convince my dad for

a long time to get a VCR. Do you know

what a VCR is? Yeah.

I'm trying to date you now. But, you

know, because before that, you only had

like kind of one TV channel. Mhm. Right.

That's it. Um, and so, you know, you can

watch movies or something like that, but

this was by the time I was in 12th

grade, we got a VCR. You know, it was a

uh like a Panasonic, which we had to go

to some like shop, which had kind of

smuggled it in, I guess, and that's

where we bought a VCR, but then being

able to

record like a World Cup football game

and then or like get put like video

tapes and watch movies like all that. So

like you know I had these discrete

memories growing up and so you know

always left me with the feeling of like

how getting access to technology drives

that step change in your life. I don't

think you'll ever be able to equal the

first time you get hot water to have

that convenience of going and opening a

tap and have hot water come out. Yeah.

It's interesting. We take for granted

the progress we've made. If you look at

human history, just those plots that

look at GDP across 2,000 years and you

see that exponential growth to where

most of the progress happened since the

industrial revolution and we just take

for granted. We forget how how far we've

gone. So our ability to understand how

great we have it and also how quickly

technology can improve is quite poor.

Oh, I mean it's it's extraordinary. You

know, I go back to India now. the power

of mobile. You know, it's mind-blowing

to see the progress through the arc of

time. It's phenomenal. What advice would

you give to young folks listening to

this all over the world who look up to

you and uh find your story inspiring who

want to be maybe the next Bachai who

want to start create companies uh build

something that has a lot of impact in

the world. Look, it's you have a lot of

luck along the way, but you obviously

have to make smart choices. you're

thinking about what you want to do. Your

brain is telling you something. But when

you do things, I think it's important to

kind of get that listen to your heart

and see whether you actually enjoy doing

it, right? That that feeling of if you

love what you do, it's so much easier

and you're going to see the best version

of yourself. It's easier said than done.

I think it's tough to find things uh you

love doing. Um but I think kind of

listening to your heart a bit more than

your mind in terms of figuring out what

you want to do I think I think is one of

the best things I would uh tell

people. The second thing is I mean

trying to work with people who you feel

at various points in my life I worked

with people who I felt were better than

me right kind of like you know you

almost are sitting in a room talking to

someone and they're like wow like you

know you know and you want that feeling

a few times trying to get yourself in a

position where you're working with

people who you feel are kind of like

stretching your abilities is what helps

you grow I think uh so putting yourself

in uncomfortable situations and I think

often you'll surprise yourself. So I

think being open-minded enough to kind

of put yourself in those positions is

maybe uh maybe another thing I would

say. What lessons can we learn maybe

from an outsider perspective for me

looking at your story and gotten to know

you a bit. You're humble, you're kind.

Usually when I think of somebody who has

had a journey like yours and climbs to

the very top of leadership, they're us

in a cutthroat world, they're usually

going to be a bit of an So what

wisdom are we supposed to draw from the

fact that uh your general approach of is

of balance, of humility, of kindness

listening to everybody? What's what's

what's your secret? I do get angry. I do

get frustrated. I I have the same

emotions all of us do right in the

context of work and everything. Uh but a

few things right I I I think you know

I over time I figured out the best way

to get the most out of people. uh you

know you kind of find missionoriented

people who are in the shad journey who

have this inner drive to excellence to

do the best and and you know you kind of

motivate people and and and you can you

can achieve a lot that way right and so

it it often tends to work out that way

but have there been times like you know

I lo lose it yeah but you know not maybe

less often than others uh and maybe over

the years

less and less so because you know I find

it's not needed to achieve what you need

to do. So losing your has not been

productive. Yeah. Less often than not I

think people respond to that. Yeah. They

may do stuff to react to that like but

you you actually want them to do the

right thing and and and so you know

maybe there's a bit of like sports you

know you know I'm a sports fan in

football coaches uh in soccer uh that

football uh you know people people often

talk about like man management right

coaches do right I think there is an

element of that in our lives how do you

get the best out of the people you work

with you know at times you're working

with people who who are so committed to

achieving if they've done something

wrong they feel it more than you you do

right so you treat them differently than

you know occasionally there are people

who you need to clearly let them know

like that wasn't okay or whatever it is

but I've often found that not to be the

case and sometimes the right words at

the right time spoken firmly can

reverberate through time also sometimes

the unspoken words you know people can

sometimes see that like you know you're

unhappy without you saying it and so

sometimes the silence can uh deliver

that message even more sometimes less is

more um who's the greatest uh soccer

player of all time Messi or Ronaldo or

Pelle or Maradona I'm going to make you

know in this question is this going to

be a political answer no I I I will tell

the truthful answer because uh answer it

is you know it's been interesting

because my son is a big Cristiano

Ronaldo fan And uh so we've had to watch

LC Classicos together, you know, with

that dynamic in there. I so admire CR7s.

I mean, I've never seen an athlete more

committed to that kind of excellence.

And so he's one of the all-time greats

but you know, for me, Messi is it. Yeah.

Yeah, when I see Leon Messi, you just

are in awe that humans are able to

achieve that level of greatness and

genius and artistry. When we talk, we'll

talk about AI, maybe robotics and this

kind of stuff, that level of genius. I'm

not sure you can possibly match by AI in

a long time. It's just an example of

greatness. And you have that kind of

greatness in other disciplines, but in

sport, you get to visually see it unlike

anything else. and just the the timing

the

movement, this is genius. I had the

chance to see him a couple weeks ago. He

played in uh San Jose. So um against the

Quake. So I went to see it, see the

game. I was a fan on the had good seats.

Knew where he would play in the second

half hopefully. And uh even at his age

just watching him when he gets the ball

that movement, you know, you're right

that special quality, it's tough to

describe, but you feel it when you see

it. Yeah, he still got

it. Uh, if we rank all the technological

innovations throughout human history

let's go back

uh maybe the history of human

civilizations 12,000 years

ago and you rank them by

the how much of a productivity

multiplier they've been. So uh we can go

to electricity or the labor

mechanization of the industrial

revolution or we can go back to the

first agricultural revolution 12,000

years ago in that long list of

inventions. Do you think AI when history

is written a thousand years from now do

you think it has a chance to be the

number one productivity multiplier? It's

a great question. Look, many years ago

I think it might have been 2017 or 2018.

Um, you know, I I said at the time like

you know, AI is the most profound

technology humanity will ever work on.

It'll be more profound than fire or

electricity. So, I have to back myself.

I, you know, I still think uh that's the

case. You know, when you asked this

question, I was thinking, well, do we

have a recency bias, right? You know

like in sports, it's very tempting to

call the current person you're seeing

the greatest Yes. player, right? and and

so is there a recency

bias and you know I do think uh from

first principles I would argue AI will

be bigger than all of those I didn't

live through those moments you know two

years ago I had to go through a surgery

and then I processed that there was a

point in time people didn't have

anesthesia when they went through these

procedures at that moment I was like

that has got to be the greatest

invention humanity has ever ever done

right so look We we don't know what it

is to have uh lived through those

times but you know and many of what

you're talking about were kind of this

general things which pretty much

affected everything you know electricity

or internet etc.

But I don't think we have ever dealt

with a technology both which is

progressing so fast, becoming so

capable. It's not clear what the ceiling

is and the main unique it's recursively

self-improving, right? It's capable of

that. And so the fact it is going it's

the first technology will kind of

dramatically accelerate creation itself

like creating things building new things

can can improve and achieve things on

its own right I think like puts it in a

different league right and so uh

different league and so I think the

impact it'll end up having uh will far

surpass everything we've seen before

uh obviously with that comes a lot

uh important things to think and wrestle

with, but I definitely think that'll end

up being the case, especially if it gets

to the point of where we can achieve

superhuman performance on the AI

research itself. So, it's a technology

that may that's an open question, but it

may be able to achieve a level to where

the technology itself can create itself

better than it it could yesterday. It's

like the move 37 of alpha research or

whatever it is, right? Like, you know

and when when Yeah, you're right. when

when it can do

novel self-directed research obviously

for a long time we'll we'll have

hopefully always humans in the loop and

all that stuff and these are complex

questions to talk about but yes I think

the underlying technology you know I've

said this like if you watched seeing

AlphaGo start from

scratch be clueless and like become

better through the course of a day you

know like you know kind like kind of

like you know really it hits you when

you see that happen even our like the V3

models if you sample the models when

they were like 30% done and 60% done and

looked at what they were

generating and you kind of see how it

all comes

together it's kind of like I would say

it's kind of inspiring a little bit

unsettling right as a as a human so all

of that is true I think well the

interesting thing of the industrial

revolution electricity like you

mentioned. You can go back to the again

the agricultural the first agricultural

revolution. There's um what's called the

Neolithic package of the first

agricultural revolution that it wasn't

just that the nomads settled down and

started planting food. But all this

other kinds of

technology was born from that and it's

included in this package. It wasn't one

piece of technology. It's there's these

ripple effects, second and third order

effects that happen. Everything from

something silly like silly profound like

pottery that can store liquids and food

uh to something we kind of take for

granted but social hierarchies

uh and political hierarchy. So like

early government was formed cuz it turns

out if humans stop moving and have some

surplus food they start coming up with

uh they get bored and they start coming

up with interesting systems then trade

emerges which turns out to be a really

profound thing and like I said

government there I mean there's just uh

second and third order effects from that

including that package is incredible and

probably extremely difficult if if you

ask one of the people in the nomadic

tribes to predict that it would be

impossible. It's difficult to predict.

But all that said, what do you think are

some of the early things we might see in

the quote unquote AI

package? I mean, most of it probably we

don't know today, but like you know the

one thing which we can tangibly start

seeing now

is you know obviously with the coding

progress you got a sense of it. It's

going to be so easy to imagine like

thoughts in your head translating that

into things that exist. That'll be part

of the package, right? Like it's going

to empower almost all of

humanity to kind of express

themselves. Maybe in the past you could

have expressed with

words but like you could kind of build

things into existence, right? You know

maybe not fully today. We are at the

early stages of VIP coding. You know

I've been amazed at what people have put

out online with V3, but it takes a bit

of work, right? You have to stitch

together a set of prompts

but all this is going to get better. The

thing I always think about, this is the

worst it'll ever be, right? Like at any

given moment in time. Yeah, it's

interesting you went there as kind of a

first thought. So the exponential

increase of access to creativity

software

creation, are you creating a program, a

piece of content for to be shared with

others, games down the line, all of that

like just becomes infinitely more

possible. Well, I think the big thing is

that uh it makes it accessible. It

unlocks the cognitive capabilities of

the entire 8 billion. No, I agree. Look

think about 40 years

ago, maybe in the US there were five

people who could do what you were doing.

Mhm. Like go do a interview, you know

and you know, but today think about with

YouTube and other other products etc.

Like how many more people are doing

it? So I think this is what technology

does, right? Like when the internet

created blogs, you know, you heard from

so many more people. So I

think but but with AI I think that

number won't be in the few hundreds of

thousands it'll be tens of millions of

people maybe even a billion

people like putting out things into the

world in a deeper way and I think it'll

change the landscape of creativity and

makes a lot of people nervous like for

example uh whatever Fox MSNBC CNN are

really nervous about this part like you

mean this dude in a who could just do

this and and use and YouTube and and and

thousands of others, tens of thousands

millions of other creators can do the

same kind of thing. That makes him

nervous. And now you get a podcast from

Nobook LM. That's about five to 10 times

better than any podcast I've ever done.

True. I'm I'm joking at this time, but

maybe not. And that changes. you have to

evolve because I on the podcasting

front, I'm a fan of

podcasts much more than I am a fan of

being a host or whatever. If there's

great podcasts that are both AIs, I'll

just stop doing this podcast. I'll

listen to that podcast. But you have to

evolve and you have to change and that

makes people really nervous, I think.

But it's also really exciting future.

The only thing I may say is I do think

like in a world in which there are two

AI, I think people value and uh

choose just like in chess you and I

would never watch Stockfish 10 or

whatever and Alph Go play against each

like it would be boring for us to watch

but Magnus Carlson and Gish that game

would be much more fascinating to watch.

So it's tough to say like one way to say

is you'll have a lot more content and so

you will be listening to AI generated

content because sometimes it's efficient

etc. But the premium experiences you

value might be a version of like the

human essence wherever it comes through

going back to what we talked earlier

about watching Messi dribble the ball. I

don't know one day I'm sure a machine

will dribble much better than Messi but

I don't know whether it would evoke that

same emotion in us. So I think that'll

be fascinating to see. I think the

element of

podcasting or

audiobooks that is about

information gathering that part might be

removed or that might be more

efficiently and in a compelling way done

by AI but then it'll be just nice to

hear humans struggle with the

information contend with the information

try to internalize it combine it with

the complexity of our own emotions and

consciousness and all that kind of stuff

but if you actually want to find out

about a piece of history, you go to

Gemini. If you want to see Lex struggle

with that history, then you look or

other humans, you look you look at that.

But that the point is it's going to

change the nature

uh continue to change the nature of how

we discover information, how we consume

the information, how we create that

information. The same way that YouTube

change everything completely, change

news, it change and that's something our

society is struggling with. Yeah

YouTube look YouTube enabled I mean you

know this better than anyone else. It's

enabled so many creators. There is no

doubt in me that like we will enable

more filmmakers than there have ever

been right. You're going to empower a

lot more people. Um so I think there's

an expansionary aspect of this which is

underestimated. I think I think it'll

unleash human creativity in a way uh

that hasn't been seen before. It's tough

to internalize. The only way is if you

if you brought someone from the 50s or

40s and just put them in front of

YouTube, you know, I think it would blow

their mind away. Similarly, I think we

would get blown away by what's possible

in a 10 to 20 year time frame. Uh do you

think there's a future? How many years

out is it that let's say let's put a

marker on it? 50% of

content in a compel good content 50% of

good content is generated by V4 56. You

know, I think depends on what it is for.

Um, like you know, maybe if you look at

movies today with

CGI, there are great filmmakers like you

still look at like who the directors are

and who use it. There are filmmakers who

don't use it at all. You value that.

There are people who use it incredibly.

You know, think about somebody like a

James Cameron like what he would do with

these tools in his hands. But I think

there'll be a lot more content created

like just like writers today use Google

Docs and not think about the fact that

they using a tool like that like people

will be using the future versions of

these things like it won't be a big deal

at all to them.

I've gotten a chance to get to know

Darren Aronowski well. He's been really

leaning in and trying to figure it's

it's fun to watch a genius who came up

before any of this was even remotely

possible. He created Pi, one of my

favorite movies, and from there just

continued to create a really interesting

variety of movies. And now he's trying

to see how can AI be used to create

compelling films. You have people like

that. You have people I've gotten to

just know uh edgier folks uh that are AI

first like Door Brothers. Both

Areronowski and Door Brothers create at

the edge of the Overton window of

society. You know, they push whether

it's uh sexuality or or violence. It's

edgy like artists are, but it's still

classy. It doesn't cross that line. Uh

whatever that line is, you know. Um

Hunter S. Thommpson is this

line that the uh the only way to find

out where the edge where the line is is

by crossing it. Uh and I think for

artists that's true. That's kind of

their purpose. Sometimes comedians and

artists just cross that line. I wonder

if you can comment on the weird place

that puts

Google because Google's line is probably

different than some of these artists.

What what's your how do you think about

specifically Vio um and Flo about like

how to allow artists to get do crazy

but also like the responsibility of

like

um not for it not to be too crazy. I

It's a great question. Look, part of you

mentioned Darren uh you know he's a

clear visionary, right? Part of the

reason we work started working with him

early on VO is he's one of those people

who was able to kind of see that future

get inspired by it and kind of showing

the way for how creative people can

express themselves with it. Look, I

think when it comes to allowing artistic

free expression is one of the most

important values in a society, right? I

think you know artists have always been

the ones to push push boundaries expand

the frontiers of thought uh and so look

I think I think that's going to be an

important value we have so I think we

will provide tools and put it in the

hands of artists for them to use and put

out their

work those APIs I mean I almost think of

that as infrastructure just like when

you provide electricity to people or

something you want them to use it and

like you're not thinking about the use

cases on top of it. So it's a

paintbrush. Yeah. And and so I think

that's how obviously there have to be

some things and you know society needs

to decide at a a fundamental level

what's okay, what's not. Uh we'll be

responsible with it. Um but I do think

you know when it comes to artistic free

expression I think that's one of those

values we should work hard to defend. Uh

I wonder if you can comment on

um maybe earlier versions of Gemini were

a little bit careful on the kind of

things you would be willing to answer. I

just want to comment on I was really

surprised and uh pleasantly surprised

and enjoy the fact that Gemini 25 Pro is

a lot less careful in a good sense.

Don't ask me why, but I've been doing a

lot of research on Jenghask Khan and the

the Aztecs. Uh, so there's a lot of

violence there in that history. It's a

very violent history. I've also been

doing a lot of research on World War I

and World War II. And earlier versions

of Gemini were very

um basically this kind of sense, are you

sure you want to learn about this? And

now it's actually very factual

objective, uh, talks about very

difficult parts of human history and

does so with nuance and depth. It's it's

been really nice. But there's a line

there that I guess Google has to kind of

walk. I wonder if it's and it's also an

engineering challenge how to how to do

that at scale across all the weird

queries that people ask. What um can you

just speak to that challenge? How do you

allow Gemini to say again, forgive

pardon my French, crazy but not

too not not too crazy. I think one of

the good insights here has been as the

models are getting more capable, the

models are really good at this stuff

right? And so I think in some ways maybe

a year ago the models weren't fully

there. So they would also do stupid

things more

often and so you know you're trying to

handle those edge cases but then you

make a mistake in how you handle those

edge cases and it compounds. But I think

with 2.5 what we particularly found is

once the models cross a certain level of

intelligence and

sophistication you know they are they

are able to reason through these nuanced

issues pretty well. And I think users

really want that right like you know you

want as much access to the raw model as

possible right but I think it's a great

area to think about like you know over

time you know we should allow more and

more closer access to it maybe obviously

let people custom prompts if they wanted

to and like you know and you know

experiment with it etc. uh I I think

that's an important direction but look

the first principles we want to think

about it is you know from a scientific

standpoint like making sure the models

and I'm saying scientific in the sense

of like how you would approach math or

physics or something like that from

first principles having the models

reason about the world be nuanced etc uh

you know from the ground up is the right

way to build these things right not like

some subset of humans is kind of hard

coding things on top of it. Uh so I

think it's the direction we've been

taking and I think you'll see us

continue to push in that direction.

Yeah. I actually asked uh I gave these

notes I took extensive notes and I gave

them to Gemini and said can you ask a

novel question that's not in these notes

and it wrote Gemini continues to really

surprise me really surprise me. It's

been really beautiful. It's incredible

model. Uh the the question it's it it

generated was you meaning Sundar told

the world Gemini is turnurning out 480

trillion tokens a month. Uh what's the

most life-changing fiveword sentence

hiding in that hast stack? That's a

Gemini question, but it made me it gave

me a sense. I don't think you can answer

that, but it gave me it made it woke me

up to like all of these tokens are

providing little aha moments for people

across the globe. So that's like

learning that those tokens are people

are curious. They ask a question and

they find something out and it truly

could be life-changing. Oh, it is. I

look I know I had the same feeling about

search many many years ago. You you know

you you

definitely you know this tokens per

month is like grown 50 times in the last

12 months. Is that accurate by the way?

Yeah, it is. You know it is it is

accurate. I'm glad it got it right. Um

but you know that number was 9.7

trillion tokens per month 12 months ago

right? It's gone gone up to 480. You

know, it's a 50x increase. So there's no

limit to human cur curiosity. Uh, and I

think it's it's one of those moments.

Uh, maybe I don't think it is there

today, but maybe one day there's a

fiveword

phrase which says what the actual

universe is or something like that and

something very meaningful. But I don't

think we are quite there yet. Do you

think the scaling laws are holding

strong on

um there's a lot of ways to describe the

scaling laws for AI, but on the

pre-training on the post-training

fronts? So the flip side of that, do you

anticipate AI progress will hit a wall?

Is there a wall? You know, it's a

cherished micro kitchen conversation.

Once in a while I have it, you know

like when Demis is visiting or, you

know Dennis Cori Jeff Gnome Sergey

a bunch of our people like we sit and

uh, you know, you know, talk about this

right? And um, look, I we see a lot of

headroom ahead, right? I think uh, we've

been able to optimize and improve on all

fronts, right? uh pre-training

post-raining, test time, compute, tool

use, right? Over time, making these more

agentic. So, getting these models to be

more general world models in that

direction like V3 uh you know, the

physics understanding is dramatically

better than what V1 or something like

that was. So, you kind of see on all

those dimensions. I I feel you know

progress is very obvious to see and I

feel like there is significant headroom

more importantly you know I'm fortunate

to work with some of the best

researchers on the planet right they

think uh there is more headroom to be

had here uh and so I think we have an

exciting trajectory ahead it's tougher

to say you know each year I sit and say

okay we're going to throw 10x more

compute over the course of next year at

it and like will we see

progress sitting here today I feel like

the year ahead we'll have a lot of

progress and do you feel any limitations

like that the bottlenecks compute

limited uh data limited idea limited do

you feel any of those limitations or is

it full steam ahead on all fronts I

think it's compute limited in this sense

right like you know we can all part of

the reason you've seen us do flash nano

flash and pro models

but not an ultra model. It's like for

each generation, we feel like we've been

able to get the Pro model at like I

don't know 80 90% of ultra capability

but ultra would be a a lot more

uh like slow and lot more expensive to

ser.

But what we've been able to do is to go

to the next generation and make the next

generation's pro as good as the previous

generation's ultra. Yeah. But be able to

serve it in a way that it's fast and you

can use it and so on. So I do think

scaling laws are working. But it's tough

to get at any given time. The models we

all use the

most is maybe like a few months behind

the maximum capability we can deliver

right? because that won't be the

fastest, easiest to use, etc. Also

that's in terms of intelligence. It

becomes harder and harder to measure

uh performance in quotes because, you

know, you could argue Gemini Flash is

much more impactful than Pro just

because of the latency. It's super

intelligent already. I mean sometimes

like latency is uh maybe more important

than intelligence especially when the

intelligence is just a little bit less

in flash not it's still incredibly smart

model. Yeah. And so you you have to now

start measuring impact and then it feels

like benchmarks are less and less

capable of capturing the intelligence of

models, the effectiveness of models, the

usefulness, the real world usefulness of

models. Uh another kitchen question. So

lots of folks are talking about

timelines for AGI or ASI artificial

super intelligence. So AGI loosely

defined is basically human expert level

at a lot of the main fields of pursuit

for humans and then ASI is what AGI

becomes presumably quickly by being able

to self-improve. So becoming far

superior in intelligence across all

these disciplines than humans. When do

you think we'll have HGI? Is 2030 a

possibility? Uh there's one other term

we should throw in there. I don't know

who who used it first. Maybe Karpati did

AJI. Have you have you heard AJI? The

artificial jagged intelligence sometimes

feels that way right both there are

progress and you see what they can do

and then like you can trivially find

they make numerical errors or like you

know counting Rs and strawberry or

something which seems to trip up most

models or whatever it is, right?

So uh so maybe we should throw that term

in there. I feel like we are in the AJI

phase where like dramatic progress some

things don't work well but overall you

know you're seeing uh lots of progress

but if your question is will will it

happen by 2030 look we constantly move

the line of what it means to be

AGI there are moments today you know

like sitting in a way in a San Francisco

street with all the crowds and the

people and kind of work its way through

I see glimpses of it there. The car is

sometimes kind of impatient trying to

work its way uh using Astra like in

Gemini Live or seeing uh you know asking

questions about the world. What's this

skinny building doing in my

neighborhood? It's a street light, not a

building. You you see glimpses. That's

why I use the word AJI because then you

see stuff which obviously you know we

far from AGI too. So you have both

experiences simultaneously happening to

you. I'll answer your question, but I'll

also throw out this. I almost feel the

term doesn't matter. What I know is by

2030 there'll be such dramatic

progress. We'll be dealing with the

consequences of that progress both the

positives uh both the positive

externalities and the negative

externalities that come with it in a big

way by 2030. So that I strongly feel

right whatever we may be arguing about

the term or maybe Gemini can answer what

that moment is in time in

2030 but I think the progress will be

dramatic right so that I believe in will

the AI think it has reached AGI by

2030 I would say we will just fall short

of that timeline right so I think it'll

take a bit longer it's amazing in the

early days of Google deep mind in 2010

they talked about a 20-year time frame

to achieve uh AGI So which is which is

kind of fascinating to see.

But you know I for me the whole thing

seeing what Google brain did in 2012 and

when we acquired deep mind in 2014 uh

right close to where we're sitting in

2012 you know Jeff Dean showed the image

of when the neural networks could

recognize uh a picture of a cat right

and identify it. you know this is the

early versions of brain right and so you

know we all talked about couple decades

I don't think we'll quite get there by

2030 so my sense is it's slightly after

that but I I would stress it doesn't

matter like what that definition

is

because you will have mind-blowing

progress on many dimensions maybe AI can

create videos we have to figure out as a

society how do we we need some system by

which we all agree that this is AI

generated and we have to disclose it in

a certain way because how do you

distinguish reality otherwise? Yeah

there's so many interesting things you

said. So, first of all, just looking

back at this recent now feels like

distant history uh with Google brain. I

mean that was before TensorFlow before

TensorFlow was made public and open

sourced. So, the tooling matters too

combined with GitHub ability to share

code. Then you have the ideas of

attention transformers and the diffusion

now and then there might be a new idea

that seems simple in retrospect but will

change everything and that could be the

post training the inference time

innovations and I think Shad Cen tweeted

that Google is just one great UI from

completely winning the AI race meaning

like UI is a huge part of it like how

that intelligence

uh uh I think Logan Cop project likes to

talk about this right now. It's an LLM

but it become like when is it going to

become a system where you're talking

about shipping systems versus shipping

the particular model. Yeah, that matters

too. How the system is um manifest

itself and how it presents itself to the

world that really really matters. Oh

hugely so. There are simple UI

innovations which have changed the world

right and uh I absolutely think so. um

we will see a lot more progress in the

next couple of years is I think AI

itself uh on a self-improving track for

UI itself like you know today

we are like constraining the models the

models can't quite express themselves in

terms of the UI to to people um but that

is uh like you know if you think about

it we've kind of boxed them in that way

but given these models can code

uh you know they should be able to write

the best interfaces to express their

ideas over time, right? That is an

incredible idea. So the APIs are already

open. So you you create a really nice

agentic system that continuously

improves the way you can be talking to

an AI. Yeah. But it a lot of that is the

interface and then of course the

incredible multimodal aspect of the

interface that Google's been pushing.

These models are natively multimodal.

They can easily take content from any

format, put it in any format. They can

write a good user interface. They

probably understand your preferences

better that over time like you know and

so so all this is like the evolution

ahead, right? And so

um that goes back to where we started

the conversation. I like I think

there'll be dramatic evolutions in the

years ahead. Maybe one more kitchen

question. uh this even further

ridiculous concept of P doom. So the

philosophically minded folks in the AI

community think about the probability

that AGI and then ASI might destroy all

of human civilization. I would say my

PDM is about

10%. Do you ever think about this kind

of long-term threat of ASI and what

would your P doom be? Look, I mean for

sure. Look, I've uh both been uh very

excited about AI. Uh but I've always

felt uh this is a technology, you know

we have to actively think about the

risks and work very very hard to harness

it in a way that it it all works out

well. Um on the PDOM question, look

it's you know, won't surprise you to say

that's probably another micro kitchen

conversation that pops up once in a

while, right? And given how powerful the

technology is, maybe stepping back, you

know, when you're running a large

organization, if you can kind of align

the incentives of the organization, you

can achieve pretty much anything, right?

Like, you know, if you can get kind of

people all marching in towards like a

goal uh in a very focused way, in a

mission-driven way, you can pretty much

achieve anything. But it's very tough to

organize all of humanity that way. But I

think if pedom is actually high at some

point all of humanity is like aligned in

making sure that's not the case right

and so we'll actually make more progress

against it I think so the irony is so

there is a

self-modulating aspect there like I

think if humanity collectively puts

their mind to solving a problem whatever

it is I think we can get there so

because of that you know I I I I think

I'm optimistic take on the pdoom

scenarios, but that doesn't mean I think

the underlying risk is actually pretty

high, but I'm uh you know, I have a lot

of faith in humanity kind of rising up

to the to meet that moment. That's

really really well put. I mean, as the

threat becomes more concrete and real

humans do really come together and get

their together. Well, the other

thing I think people don't often talk

about is probability of doom without AI.

So, there's all these other ways that

humans can destroy themselves. And it's

very possible, at least I believe so

that AI will help us become

smarter, kinder to each other, uh more

efficient. uh it it'll help more parts

of the world flourish where it would be

less resource constrainted which is

often the source of military conflict

and tensions and so on. So we also have

to load into that what's the pdoom

without AI with AI Poom with AI Poom

without AI cuz it's very possible that

AI will be the thing that saves us saves

human civilizations from all the other

threats. I agree with you. I think I

think it's insightful. Uh look, I felt

like to make progress on some of the

toughest problems would be good to have

AI like pair helping you, right? And and

like you know, so that resonates with me

for sure. Yeah. Quick pause. Bathroom

break. You know, let's do that. If

notebook LM was the same compel like

what I saw today with Beam, if it was

compelling in the same kind of way

blew my mind. It was incredible. Oh, I

didn't think it's possible. I didn't My

was like, can you imagine like the US

president and the Chinese president

being able to do something like Beam

with the live me translation working

well? So, they're both sitting and

talking, make progress a bit more. Uh

yeah, just uh for people listening, we

took a quick bath break and now we're

talking about the demo I did. We'll

probably post it somewhere somehow

maybe here. the I got a chance to

experience beam and it

was it's hard to it's hard to describe

in words how real it felt with just what

is it six cameras. It's incredible. It's

incredible. It's it's one of the

toughest products of you can't quite

describe it to people even when we show

it in slides etc like you don't know

what it is you have to kind of

experience it on the world leaders front

on politics geopolitics that there's

something really special again with

studying World War II and uh how much

could have been saved if Chamberlain met

Stalin in person and I sometimes also

struggle explaining to people

articulating Why I believe meeting in

person for world leaders is powerful. It

just seems naive to say that but there

is something there in person and with

beam I I felt that same thing and then

I'm unable to explain all I kept doing

is what like a child does you look real

you know and I mean I don't know if that

makes meetings more productive or so on

but it certainly makes them more

uh the same reason you want to show up

to work versus remote sometimes that

human connection

I don't know what that is. It's hard to

it's hard to put into words.

Um there's

some there's something beautiful about

great teams collaborating on a thing

that's that's not captured by the

productivity of that team or by whatever

on paper. Like some of the most

beautiful moments you experience in life

is at work pursuing a difficult thing

together for many months.

There's nothing like it. you're in the

trenches and yeah, you do form bonds

that way for sure. And to be able to do

that like somewhat remotely in that same

personal touch, I don't know, that's a

deeply fulfilling thing. I know a lot of

people I I personally hate meetings

because a significant percent of

meetings when done uh poorly are are

don't don't serve a clear purpose. So

but that's a meeting problem. That's not

a communication problem. If you can

improve the communication for the

meetings that are useful, that's just

incredible. So yeah, I was blown away by

the great engineering behind it and then

we we get to see what impact that has.

That's really interesting. But just

incredible engineering. Really

impressive. Oh, it is. And obviously

we'll work hard over the years to make

it more and more accessible. But yeah

even on a personal front outside of work

meetings, you know, a grandmother who's

far away from our grandchild and being

able to, you know, have that kind of an

interaction, right? All that I think

will end up being very mean. Nothing

substitutes being in person, but you

know, it's not always possible. You

know, you could be a soldier deployed

right, trying to talk to your loved

ones. So, I think uh you know, so that's

what inspires us when you and

I hung out last year and took a walk. I

remember I don't think we talked about

this but but I remember uh you know

outside of that seeing dozens of

articles written by analysts and experts

and so on that um Sundar Pay should step

down because the perception was that

Google was definitively losing the AI

race has lost its magic touch in the uh

rapidly evolving uh technological uh

landscape and now a year later it's

crazy you showed this plot

of all the things that were shipped over

the past year is incredible and Gemini

Pro is winning across many benchmarks

and products as we sit here today. So

take me through that experience when

there's all these articles saying you're

the wrong guy to lead Google through

this. Google's lost, it's done, it's

over to today where Google is winning

again. What were some low points during

that time? Look, I

um I mean lots to unpack. Um you know

obviously

like the main bet I made as a CEO was to

really

uh you know, make sure the company was

approaching everything in a AI first

way. Really, you know, setting ourselves

up to develop AGI responsibly, right?

and and and make sure we're putting out

products uh which which embodies that

things that are very very useful for

people. So look, I I knew even through

moments like that last year

uh, you know, I had a good sense of what

we were building internally, right? So

I'd already made, you know, many

important decisions, you know, bringing

together teams of the caliber of brain

and deep mind and setting up Google deep

mind. There were things like we made the

decision to invest in TPUs 10 years ago.

So, we knew we were scaling up and

building big models. Anytime you're in a

situation like

that, a few aspects

uh, I'm good at tuning out noise, right?

Separating signal from noise. Do you

scuba dive? Like, have you? No. You

know, it's amazing. Like I'm not good at

it, but I've done it a few times. But

sometimes you jump in the ocean, it's so

choppy. But you go down one ft under

it's the calst thing in the entire uh

universe, right? So there's a version of

that, right? Like you know, uh running

Google, you know, you may as well be

coaching Barcelona or Real Madrid

right? Like you know, you have a bad

season. So there are aspects to that but

you know like look I I'm good at tuning

out the noise. I do watch out for

signals you know it's important to

separate the signal from the noise. So

there are good people sometimes making

good points outside. So you want to

listen to it. You want to take that

feedback

in. But you know internally like you

know you're making a set of

consequential decisions. Right? As

leaders you're making a lot of

decisions. Many of them are like

inconsequential like it feels like but

over time you learn that most of the

decisions you're making on a day-to-day

basis doesn't matter. like you have to

make them and you're making them just to

keep things moving but you have to make

a few consequential decisions right and

and

uh we

had set up the right teams right leaders

we had world-class

researchers we were training

Gemini internally there are factors

which were for example outside people

may not have appreciated I mean TPUs are

amazing but we had to ramp up TPUs two

that took time, right? And and uh to

scale, actually having enough TPUs to

get the compute

needed, but I could see internally the

trajectory we were

on and and be, you know, I was so

excited internally about the

possibility. To me, this moment felt

like one of the biggest opportunities

ahead for us as a company. That the

opportunity space ahead over the next

decade, next 20 years is bigger than

what has happened in the past. Um, and I

thought we were set up like better than

most companies in the world to go uh

realize that vision. I mean you had to

make some consequential bold decisions

like you mentioned the merger of deep

mind and

brain.

Uh maybe it's my perspective just

knowing humans. I'm sure there's a lot

of egos involved. It's very difficult to

merge teams and I'm sure there are some

hard decisions to be made. Can you take

me through your process of how you think

through that? Do you go to pull the

trigger and make that decision? Maybe

what were some painful points? How do

you navigate those turbulent waters?

Look, we were fortunate to have two

world-class teams. Uh but you're right

like it's like somebody coming and

telling to you, take Stanford and MIT

right? And then put them together and

create a great department, right? And

and easier said than done. Uh but we

were fortunate, you know, phenomenal

teams, both had their strengths, you

know, they were run very differently

right? like uh brain was kind of a lot

of diverse projects bottoms up and out

of it came a lot of important research

breakthroughs. Deep mind at the time had

a strong vision of how you want to build

AGI and so they were pursuing their

direction. But I think through those

moments luckily tapping into um you know

Jeff had expressed a desire to be more

to go back to more of a scientific

individual contributor roots. You know

he felt like management was taking up

too much of his time. uh and and and

Demis naturally I think uh you know uh

was running deep mine and was a natural

choice there but I think it was you were

right you know it took us a while to

bring the teams together credit to Deis

Jeff Kai all the great people there they

worked super hard to combine the best of

both worlds when you set up that team a

few sleepless nights here and there as

we put that thing together we were

patient in how we did it so that it

works well for the long term, right? And

and some of that in that moment, I think

yes, with things moving fast, uh I think

you definitely uh felt the pressure, but

I think we pulled off that uh transition

well and you know, I think I think uh

you know, they've obviously

uh doing incredible work and there's a

lot more incredible things ahead coming

from them. Like we talked about, you

have a very calm, eventempered

respectful demeanor. During that time

whether it's the merger or just dealing

with the noise, uh did were there times

where frustration boiled over? Like, did

you uh have to go a bit more intense on

everybody than you usually would?

Probably. You know, probably right. I

think I think in the sense that you know

it was a moment where we were all

driving hard but when you're in the

trenches working with

passion you're going to have days right

you disagree you argue but like all that

I mean just part of the course of

working intensely right and uh you know

at the end of the day all of us are

doing what we're doing because uh the

impact it can have we're motivated by it

it's like uh you know for many of us

this has been a long-term

uh journey and so it's been super

exciting the positive moments far

outweigh the kind of stressful moments

just early this year I had a chance to

celebrate backto back over two days like

you know Nobel Prize for Jeff Finton and

the next day a Nobel Prize for Dennis

and John Jumper you know you worked with

people like that all that is super

inspiring is there something like with

view where you had to like put your foot

down maybe with less uh versus more

where like I'm the CEO and we're m we're

doing this to my earlier point about

consequential decisions you make there

are decisions you make people can

disagree pretty vehemently and but at

some point like you know you make a

clear decision and you you just ask

people to commit right like you know you

can disagree

But it's time to disagree and come it so

that we can get moving and whether it's

put putting the foot down or you know

like you know it's it's a natural part

of what all of us have to do and you

know I think you can do that calmly and

be very firm in the direction you're

making the decision and I think if

you're clear actually people over time

respect that right like you know if you

can make decisions with clarity I find

it very effective in meetings where

you're making such decisions

to hear everyone out. I think it's

important when you can to hear everyone

out. Sometimes what you're hearing

actually influences how you think about

and you're wrestling with it and making

a decision. Sometimes you have a clear

conviction and you state so look I

uh I you know this is how I feel and you

know this is my conviction and you kind

of place the bet and you move on. other

big decisions like that. I'm kind of

intuitively assume the merger was the

big one. I think that was a very

important decision uh you know for for

the company to to meet the moment. I

think we had to make sure we were uh we

were doing that and doing that well. I

think that was a consequential

decisions. There were many other things.

We set up a AI infrastructure team like

to really go meet the moment to scale up

the compute we needed to and really

brought teams from desperate parts of

the company kind of created it to to

move forward.

um you know bringing people like getting

people to kind of work together

physically both in London with Deep Mind

and what we call Gradient Canopy which

is where the Mountain View Google Deep

Mind teams are. But one of my favorite

moments is I routinely walk uh like

multiple times per week to the graining

canopy building where our top

researchers are working on the models.

Sergey is often there amongst them

right? Like you know just you know

looking at uh you know getting an update

on the model seeing loss curves. So all

that I think that cultural part of

getting the teams together

back with that energy I think ended up

playing a big role too. What about the

decision to recently add AI mode? So

Google search is the uh as they say the

front page of the internet. It's like a

legendary

minimalist thing with 10 blue links.

Like that's when people think internet

they think that page and now you're

starting to mess with that. So the AI

mode which is a separate tab and then

integrating AI in the results. I'm sure

there were some battles in meetings on

that one. Look uh you know in some ways

when mobile came you know people wanted

answers to more questions. So we're kind

of constantly evolving it. But you're

right this moment you know that

evolution uh because the underlying

technology is becoming much more

capable you know you can have AI give a

lot of context you know but one of our

important design goals though is when

you come to Google search you're going

to get a lot of context but you're going

to go and find a lot of things out on

the web so that will be true in AI mode

in AI overviews and so

on but I think to our earlier

conversation We are still giving you

access to links but think of the AI as a

layer which is giving you context

summary maybe in AI mode you can have a

dialogue with it back and forth. Mhm. On

your journey right and but through it

all you're kind of learning what's out

there in the world. So those core

principles don't change but I think AI

mode allows us to push the we have our

best models there right uh models which

are using search as a deep

tool really for every query you're

asking kind of fanning out doing

multiple searches like kind of

assembling that knowledge in a way so

you can go and consume what you want to

right and and and that's how we think

about it I got a chance to listen to a

bunch of Elizabeth Liz Reed yeah

describe this two things stood out to me

that you mentioned. One thing is what

you were talking about is the query fan

out which I didn't even think about

before

uh is the the powerful aspect of

integrating a bunch of stuff on the web

for you in one place. So yes, it

provides that context so that you can

decide which page to then go on to. The

other really really big thing speaks to

the earlier in terms of productivity

multiplier that we're talking about that

she mentioned was um language. So one of

the things you don't quite understand is

it through AI mode you make for

non-English speakers you make sort of

let's say English language websites

accessible by in the reasoning process

as you try to figure out what you're

looking for. Of course, once you show up

to a page, you can use a basic

translate. Yeah. But that process of

figuring it out, if you empathize with a

large part of the world that doesn't

speak English, their like web uh is much

smaller in that original language. And

so it unlocks again unlocks that huge

cognitive capacity there that we don't

you know, you take for granted here with

all the bloggers and the journalists

writing about AI mode. you forget that

this now unlocks

um because Gemini is really good at

translation. No, it is I mean the

multimodality, the translation, uh its

ability to reason, we are dramatically

improving tool use. Uh like I as putting

that power in the flow of search, I I

think look I'm I'm super excited with AI

overviews. We've we've seen the product

has gotten much better. we know we

measure it using all kinds of user

metrics. It's obviously driven strong

growth of the product uh and you know

we've been testing AI mode you know it's

now in the hands of millions of people

and the early metrics are very

encouraging. So look I I I'm excited

about this next chapter chapter of

search for people who are not thinking

through or aware of this. So there's the

10 blue links with AI overview on top

that provides a nice summarization. You

can expand it and you have sources and

links now. Yep. Embedded. Yeah, I

believe at least Liz said so. I actually

didn't notice it, but there's ads in the

AI overview.

Also, I don't think there's ads in AI

mode.

uh when ads in AI mode. So now when do

you think I mean it's okay we should say

that in the '9s I remember the animated

gifts banner gifts that take you to some

shady websites that have nothing to do

with anything. AdSense revolutionized

advertisement. It's one of the greatest

inventions

um in in recent history because it

allows us for

free to have access to all these kinds

of services. So ads fuel a lot of really

powerful

services and at its best it's showing

you relevant ads but also very

importantly in a way that's not super

annoying. Mhm. Right. In a classy way.

So

uh when do you think it's possible to

add ads into AI mode and what does that

look like from a classy non-anoying

perspective? Two things. early part of

AI mode uh will obviously focus more on

the organic experience to make sure we

are getting it right. I think the

fundamental value of ads are it enables

access to deploy the services to

billions of people. The second is ads

are the reason we've always taken ads

seriously is we view ads as commercial

information but it's still information

and so we bring the same quality metrics

to it. I think with AI mode to our

earlier conversation about I think AI

itself will help us over time figure out

you know the best way to do it. I I

think given we giving context around

everything we I think it'll give us more

opportunities to also explain okay

here's some commercial information like

today as a podcaster you do it at

certain spots and you probably figure

out what's best in your podcast.

Um I I think so there are aspects of

that but I think you know I think the

underlying need of people value

commercial information businesses are

trying to connect to users all that

doesn't change in a AI moment but look

we will rethink it you've seen us in

YouTube now do a mixture of subscription

and ads like

obviously you know we we are now

introducing subscription offerings uh

across everything and so as part of that

we can optim the optimization point will

end up being a different place as well.

Do you see a trajectory in the possible

future where AI mode completely

replaces the 10 blue links plus AI

overview? Our current plan is AI mode is

going to be there as a separate tab for

people who really want to experience

that but it's not yet at the level where

our main search page is but as features

work we'll keep migrating it to the main

page and so you can view it as a

continuum AI mode will offer you the

bleeding edge

experience but it'll work will keep

overflowing to AI overviews and the main

main experience and the idea That AI

mode will still take you to the web to

the human created web. Yes, that's going

to be a core design principle for us. So

really, if users decide, right, they

drive this. Yeah, it's just exciting, a

little bit scary that it might change

the

internet because you Google has been

dominating with a very specific look and

idea of what it means to have the

internet and to as you move to AI

mode. I mean, I it's just a different

experience. Um, I think Liz was talking

about I think you've mentioned that you

ask more questions, you ask longer

questions, dramatically different types

of questions. Yeah. Like it actually

fuels curiosity. Like I think it's for

me, I've been asking just a much larger

number of questions of this blackbox

machine, let's say, whatever it is. and

and with AI overview, it's interesting

like I because I still value the

human I still ultimately want to end up

on the human created

web but I like you said the context

really helps it helps us deliver higher

quality referrals right you know where

people are like they have much higher

likelihood of finding what they're

looking for they're exploring they're

curious their intent is getting

satisfied more so all that's what all

our metrics

It makes the humans that create the web

nervous. The journalists are getting

nervous. They've already been nervous.

Like we mentioned, CNN is nervous

because of podcasts. Um, it makes people

nervous. Look, I I I think news and

journalism will play an important role

you know, in the future. Uh, we're

pretty committed to it, right? And uh so

I think making sure that ecosystem in

fact I think we'll be able to

differentiate ourselves as a company

over time because of our commitment

there. So it's it's it's something I

think you know I definitely value a lot

and and as we are designing we'll

continue prioritizing approaches. I'm

sure for the people who want they can

have a fine-tuned AI model that's

clickbait hit pieces uh that will

replace current journalism. Uh that's a

shot of journalism, forgive me. Uh but I

I find that if you're looking for really

strong criticism of things that Gemini

is very good at providing that. Oh

absolutely. It's better than anything

the for now I mean people are concerned

that there would be bias that's

introduced that as the AI systems become

more and more powerful there's incentive

from sponsors

uh to roll in and try to control the

output of the AI models. uh but for now

the objective criticism that's provided

is way better than journalism. Of course

the argument is the journalists are

still valuable but then I don't know the

crowd search journalism that we get on

the open internet is also very very

powerful. I feel like they're all super

important things. I think it's good that

you get a lot of crowdsourced

information coming

in, but I feel like there is real value

for high quality journalism, right? And

and I think these are all complimentary.

I think like I view it as I find myself

constantly seeking out also like try to

find objective reporting on on things

too. uh and and sometimes you get more

context from the crowdfunded sources you

read online but I think both end up

playing a super important role. So

there's uh you spoken a little about

about this de talked about this is sort

of

the the slice of the web that will

increasingly become about providing

information for agents. So we can think

about as like two layers of the web. One

is for humans, one is for agents. Do you

see the AI agents? Do do you see the one

that's for AI agents growing over time?

Do you see there still being long-term 5

10 years value for the human created

human created for the purpose of human

consumption web or will it all be agents

in the end? Yeah.

today, like not everyone does, but you

know, you you go to a you go to a big

retail store, you love walking the

aisle, you love shopping

uh or grocery store, picking out food

etc., but you're also online shopping

and they're delivering, right? So, both

are complimentary and like that's true

for restaurants

etc. So, I do feel like over time

websites will also get better for

humans. they will be better designed. Uh

AI might actually design them better for

humans. So I I expect the web to get a

lot richer and more interesting and uh

better to

use. At the same time, I think there'll

be an agentic

web which is also making a lot of

progress and you have to solve the

business value and the incentives to

make that work well, right? like for

people to participate in

it but I think both will coexist and

obviously the agents may not need the

same I mean not may not they won't need

the same design and the UI paradigms

which humans need to interact with uh

but I think both will both be there I

have to ask you about Chrome uh I have

to say for me personally Google Chrome

is

probably I don't know I'd like to see

where I would rank it. But in this

temptation, this is not a recency bias

although it might be a little bit, but I

think it's up there top three, maybe the

number one piece of software for me of

all time. It's just incredible. It's

really incredible. The browser is our

window to the web. And Chrome really

continued for many years, but even

initially to push the innovation on that

front when it was stale, and it

continues to challenge, it continues to

make it more uh performant. so

efficient, just innovate constantly. Uh

and the the the Chromium aspect of it.

Anyway

uh, you were one of the pioneers of

Chrome, pushing for it when it was an

insane idea, probably one of the ideas

that was criticized and doubted and so

on. So, can you tell me um the story of

what it took to push for Chrome? What

was your

vision? Look, it was a

such a dynamic time uh in around 2004

2005 with Ajax the web suddenly becoming

dynamic in a matter of few

months Flickr

Gmail, Google Maps all kind of came into

existence, right? like the fact that you

have an interactive dynamic web. The web

was evolving from simple uh text pages

simple HTML to rich dynamic

applications. But at the same time, you

could see the browser was

never meant for that world, right? Like

JavaScript execution was super slow. uh

you know the browser was far away from

being an operating system for that rich

modern web which was coming into uh

coming into place. So that's the

opportunity we saw like uh you know it's

an amazing early team. I still remember

the day we got a shell on WebKit running

and how fast it was.

uh you know we had the clear vision for

building a browser like we wanted to

bring core OS principles into the

browser right like so we built a secure

browser sandbox each tab was its own not

these things are common now but at the

time like it was pretty unique

uh we found an amazing team in our

Denmark uh with a leader who built a V8

the JavaScript VM which at the time was

25 times faster than uh any other

JavaScript VM out there. And by the way

you're right. We open sourced it all and

you know and put it in Chromium too. But

we really thought the web could work

much better um uh you know much faster

and you could be much safer browsing the

web. And the name Chrome came was

because we literally felt people were

like the the the Chrome of the browser

was getting clunkier. We wanted to

minimize it. And so that was the origins

of the project. Definitely obviously

uh highly biased person here talking

about Chrome. Uh but you know it's the

most fun I've had uh building a product

from the ground up and you know it it

was an extraordinary team. Uh had uh my

co-founders on the project were

terrific. So definite fond memories. So

for people who don't know Sundar it's

probably fair to say you're the reason

we have Chrome. Yes. I know there's a

lot of incredible engineers, but pushing

for it inside a company that probably

was opposing it because it's a crazy

idea because um as everybody probably

knows, it's incredibly difficult to

build a browser. Yeah. Look, I uh Eric

who was the CEO at the time, I think it

was less that he was opposed to it. He

kind of firsthand knew what a crazy

thing it is to go build a browser. And

so he definitely was like this is, you

know, there was a crazy aspect to

actually wanting to go build a browser.

But um he was very supportive uh you

know everyone the founders were I think

once we started you know building

something and we could use it and see

how much better from then on like you

know you're you're really tinkering with

the product and making it better it came

to life pretty fast. What uh wisdom do

you draw from that from

um pushing through on a crazy idea in

the early days that ends up being

revolutionary? what for future crazy

ideas like it. I mean this this is

something Larry and Sergey have

articulated clearly. I really internal

internalized this early on which is you

know their whole feeling around working

on

moonshots like as a way when you work on

something very ambitious first of all it

attracts the best people right so that's

an advantage you get number two because

it's so ambitious you don't have others

working on something crazy so you pretty

much have the path to yourselves right

it's like way more self-driving number

three it is even if you end up quite not

accomplishing what you set out to do and

you end up doing 60 80% of it, you'll

end up being a terrific success. So, so

you know that's the advice I would give

people, right? I think like you know

it's just aiming for big ideas has all

these

advantages and and it's risky but it

also has all these advantages which

people I don't think fully internalize.

I mean you mentioned one of the craziest

biggest moonshots which is Whimo. Uh

it's when when I first saw over a decade

ago a way more vehicle a Google

self-driving car

vehicle. It was it was for me it was an

aha moment for robotics. It made me fall

in love with robotics even more than

before. It gave me a glimpse into the

future. So it's incredible. I'm truly

grateful for that project for what it

symbolizes. But it's also crazy

moonshot. is for for a long time has

been just like you mentioned with scuba

diving just not listening to anybody

just calmly improving the system better

and better more testing just expanding

uh the operational domain more and more

first of all congrats on uh 10 million

paid robo taxi rides uh what

lessons do you take from Whimo about

like the the perseverance the

persistence on that project I look

really proud of the progress uh we have

had with whimo one of the things I think

we were very committed to you know the

final 20% can look like I mean we always

say right the first 80% is easy the

final 20% takes 80% of the time I think

we

definitely were we're working through

that phase with whimo but I was aware of

that so but you know we knew we were at

that

stage we knew we were the technology gap

between while there were many people

many other self-driving companies we

knew the technology gap was there in

fact right at the moment when others

were doubting Whimo is

when I don't know made the decision to

invest more in Whimo right because so uh

so in some ways it's it's

counterintuitive uh but I think look

we've always been a deep technology

company and like uh you know is a

version of kind of building a AI robot

that works well And so we get attracted

to problems like that. the caliber of

the teams there uh you know uh

phenomenal teams and so I know you

followed the space super closely uh you

know I'm talking to someone who knows

the space well but it was very obvious

it's going to get there and you know

there's still more work to do but we you

know it's a good example where we always

prioritized being ambitious and safety

at the same time right and and and

equally committed to both and and pushed

odd and you know couldn't be more

thrilled with uh how it's working uh how

much people love love the

experience and it this year is

definitely we've scaled up a lot and

we'll continue scaling up in 26 that

said uh the competition is heating up

you've been uh friendly with Elon uh

even though technic is a competitor but

you've been friendly with a lot of tech

CEOs in that way just showing respect

towards them and so on what do you think

about the robo taxi efforts that Tesla

is doing. Do you see it as competition?

What do you think? Do you like the

competition?

We are one of the earliest and biggest

backers of SpaceX uh as Google uh right

so uh you know thrilled with uh what

SpaceX is doing and fortunate to be uh

investors as a company there right and

and look we don't compete with Tesla

directly we are not making cars etc

right we building L45 autonomy we're

building a way driver which is general

purpose and can be used in many

headings. They're obviously working on

making Tesla self-driving too. I've just

assumed it's a the facto that Elon would

succeed in whatever he does. So like you

know you know that that that is uh not

something I question. So but I think we

are so far from these spaces are such

vast spaces like I I think about

transportation the opportunity space.

The Whimo driver is a general purpose

technology we can apply in many

situations. So you have a vast green

space. Uh in all future scenarios, I see

Tesla doing well and you know way more

doing well. Like we mentioned with the

Neolithic package, I think it's very

possible that in the quote unquote AI

package when the history is written

autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars

is like the big thing that changes

everything. Imagine over a period of uh

a decade or two just a complete

transition from manually driven to

autonomous in ways we might we might not

predict it might change the way we move

about the world completely. So that you

know the possibility of that and then

the second and third order effects as

you're seeing now with Tesla very

possibly you would see some

um internally with Alphabet maybe Whimo

maybe some of the Gemini robotics stuff

it might lead you into the other domains

of robotics because we should remember

that Whimo is a robot. Mhm. It just

happens to be on four wheels. So you you

said that the next big thing we can also

throw that into AI package. The big aha

moment might be in the space of

robotics. What do you think that that

would look like? Dispoint team is very

focused on Gemini robotics, right? So we

are definitely building the underlying

models. Well, so we have a lot of

investments there and I think we also

pretty cutting edge in our uh research

there. So we are definitely driving that

direction. We obviously are thinking

about applications in robotics. We'll

we'll kind of work seriously. We are

partnering with a few companies today.

But it's an area I would say stay tuned.

We are you know we are yet to fully

articulate our plans outside but it's an

area we are definitely committed to

driving a lot of progress but I think AI

ends up driving that massive progress in

robotics. The field has been held back

uh uh for for a while. I mean the

hardware has made extraordinary uh

progress. Uh the software had been the

challenge but you know with AI now and

uh and and the and the generalized

models we are building uh you know we

are building these models getting them

to work in the real world in a safe way

in a generalized way is the frontier

we're pushing pretty hard on. Well it's

really nice to see the the models and

the different teams integrated to where

all of them are pushing towards one

world model that's being built. to from

all these different angles

multimodal. You're ultimately trying to

get

Gemini. So the same thing that would

make AI mode really effective in

answering your questions, which requires

a kind of world model is the same kind

of thing that would help a robot be

useful in the physical world. So

everything is aligned. That that is what

makes this moment so unique because

running a company for the first time you

can do one investment in a very deep

horizontal way on top of it you can like

drive multiple businesses forward right

and you know and that's that's

effectively what we are doing in Google

and alphabet right yeah it's all coming

together like it was planned ahead of

time but it's not of course it's all

distributed I mean if uh Gmail and

sheets and all these other incredible

services. I can sing Gmail praises for

years. I mean, it's just just

revolutionized email, but the moment you

start to integrate AI Gemini into Gmail

I mean, that's the other thing. Speaking

of productivity multiplier, people

complain about email, but that changed

everything. Email, like the invention of

email changed everything. And it's been

ripe. There's been a few folks trying to

revolutionize email. Some of them on top

of Gmail, but that's like ripe for

innovation. not just spam filtering

but you uh you you demoed a really nice

demo of personalized responses, right?

Personalized responses. And it at first

I was like at first I felt really bad

about

that. But then I realized that's there's

nothing wrong to feel bad about because

will you uh the example you gave is when

a friend asks you know you went to

whatever hiking location

uh do you have any advice and they just

searches through all your information to

give them good advice and then you put

the cherry on top maybe some love or

whatever camaraderie but theformational

aspect the knowledge transfer it does

for you I think there'll be important

moments like it should be like today if

you write a card in your own handwriting

and send it to someone that's a special

thing. Similarly, there'll be a time I

mean to your friends maybe your friend

wrote and said he's not doing well or

something you know those are moments you

want to save your times for writing

something reaching out but you know like

saying give me all the details of the

trip you took you know to me makes a lot

of sense for a AI assistant to help you

right and so I think both are important

but I think I think I'm excited about

that direction yeah I think ultimately

it gives more time for us humans us to

do the things we humans find meaningful.

And I think it scares a lot of people

because we're going to have to ask

ourselves the hard question of like what

do we find meaningful? And I'm sure

there's answers. I it's the old question

of the meaning meaning of existence is

you you have to try to figure that out.

That might be ultimately uh parenting or

being creative in some domains of art or

writing. And it it challenges to to to

like you know it's a good question of to

ask yourself like in my life what is the

thing that brings me most joy and

fulfillment and if I'm able to actually

focus more time on that that's really

powerful. I think that's the uh you know

that's the holy grail. If you get this

right I think it allows more people uh

to find that. I have to ask you on the

programming front uh AI is getting

really good at programming. Gemini, both

the Agentic and just the LLM has been

incredible. So, a lot of programmers are

really worried that their jobs they will

lose their jobs uh how worried should

they be and how should they adjust so

they can be thriving in this new world

where more and more code is written by

AI? I think a few things looking at

Google

um you know we've given various stats

around

like you know 30% of uh code now uses

like AI generated suggestions or

whatever it is but the most important

metric and we carefully measure it is

like how much has our engineering

velocity increased as a company due to

AI right and it's like tough to measure

and we kind of rigorously try to measure

it and our estimates are that number is

now at 10%. Right? Like now across the

company we've accomplished a 10%

engineering velocity

increase using

AI but we plan to hire engineers more

engineers next year right so you because

the opportunity space of what we can do

is expanding too right and so

I think hopefully you know for at least

the near to midterm term for many

engineers it frees up more and more of

the you know even in engineering and

coding there are aspects which are so

much fun you're designing you're

architecting you're solving a problem

there's a lot of grunt work you know

which all goes hand in hand but it

hopefully takes a lot of that away makes

it even more fun to code frees you up

more time to create problem solve

brainstorm with your fellow colleagues

and so on, right? So that's that's the

opportunity there. And second, I think

like you know it'll

attract it'll put the creative power in

more people's hands which means people

will create more that means there'll be

more engineers doing more things.

So it's tough to fully predict but you

know I I think in general in this moment

it feels like you know you know people

uh adopt these tools and be better

programmers like there are more people

playing chess now than ever before.

Right? So uh you know it feels positive

that way to me at least speaking from

within a Google context uh is how I

would you know talk to them about it. I

still I just know anecdotally a lot of

great

programmers are generating a lot of

code. So their productivity they're not

always using all the code just you know

there's still a lot of editing but

like even for me it's still programming

as a side thing. I think I'm like 5x

more productive. I don't I I think

that's uh even for a large code base

that's touching a lot of users like

Google's does. I'm imagining like very

soon that productivity should be going

up even more. The big unlock will be as

we make the agent capabilities much more

robust, right? I think that's what

unlocks that next big wave. I think the

10% is like a massive number like you

know if tomorrow like I showed up and

said like you can improve like a large

organization's productivity by

10%. When you have tens of thousands of

engineers that's a phenomenal number. uh

and you know that's different than what

others site as statistics saying like

you know like this percentage of code is

now written by AI I'm talking more about

like overall productivity the actual

productivity right engineering

productivity which is two different

things and and which is the more

important uh

metric and but I think it'll get better

right and like you know uh I think

there's no engineer who tomorrow if you

magically became 2x more productive it's

just going to create more things you're

going to create more value added things

and so I think they you'll you'll find

more satisfaction in your job right so

and there's a lot of aspects I mean the

actual Google codebase might just

improve because it'll become more

standardized more um easier for people

to move about the codebase because AI

will help with that and therefore that

will also allow the AI to understand the

entire codebase better which makes the

engineering aspect that's I've been

using cursor a lot

uh as as a way to program with Gemini

and other models is like it. One of its

powerful things is it's aware of the

entire codebase and that allows you to

ask questions of it. It allows the

agents to move about that code base in a

really powerful way. I mean that's a

huge unlock. Think about like you know

migrations refactoring old coal bases.

Refactoring. Yeah. I mean think about

like you know once we can do all this in

a much better more robust way than where

we are today. I think in the end

everything will be written in JavaScript

and run run in Chrome. I think it's all

going to that uh direction. I mean just

for fun, Google has legendary code

coding interviews

uh like rigorous interviews for the

engineers. How can you comment on how

that has changed in the era of AI? It's

just such a weird

uh you know the whiteboard interview I I

assume is not allowed to have some

prompts. Such a a good question. Look, I

do

think, you know, we're making

sure, you know, we'll we'll introduce at

least one round of inperson interviews

for people just to make sure the

fundamentals are there, I think that'll

end up being important, but it's an

equally important skill. Look, if you

can use these tools to generate better

code, uh like you know, I think I think

that's an asset. And so uh you know I

think uh so overall I think it's a it's

a massive positive vibe coding engineer

uh do you recommend uh pe people uh

students interested in programming still

get an education uh in computer science

and college education what do you think

I do if you have a passion for computer

science I would you know computer

science is obviously a lot more than

programming alone so I would I still

don't think I would

change what you pursue you

um I think AI will horizontally allow

impact every field. It's pretty tough to

predict in what

ways. So any education in which you're

learning good first principles thinking

I think is good education. You've

revolutionized web browsing, you've

revolutionized a lot of things over the

years. Um Android changed the game. It's

an incredible uh operating system. And

we could talk for hours about Android.

What does the future of Android look

like? Is it is it possible it becomes

more and more

AIcentric? Uh especially now that you

throw into the mix Android XR

with being able to do augmented reality

mixed reality and virtual reality in the

physical world. Yeah. The best

innovations in computing have come when

you're uh through a paradigm IO change

right? like you know when when with GUI

and then with a graphical user interface

and then with multi-touch in the context

of mobile voice later on similarly I

feel like you know AR is that next

paradigm I think it was held back both

the system integration challenges of

making good AR is very very hard the

second thing is you need AI to actually

kind of otherwise the IO is too

complicated for you to have natural

seamless IO to that uh uh

paradigm AI ends up being super

important and so this is why project

Astra ends up being super critical for

that Android uh XR world uh but it is I

think when you use glasses and you know

always been amazed like at at the how

useful these things are going to be so I

look I think it's a real opportunity for

Android I think XR is one way it'll kind

of really come to life. But I think

there's an opportunity to rethink the

mobile OS too, right? I think we've been

kind of living in this paradigm of like

apps and shortcuts, all that won't go

away. But again, like if you're trying

to get stuff done at an operating system

level, you know, it needs to be more

agentic so that you can kind of describe

what you want to do or like it

proactively understands what you're

trying to do, learns from how you're

doing things over and over again and

kind of is adapting to you. All that is

kind of like the unlock we need to go

and do with a basic efficient minimalist

uh UI. I've gotten a chance to try the

glasses and they're incredible. It's the

little stuff. It's hard to put into

words, but no latency. It just works.

Even that little map demo where you look

down and you look up and there's a very

smooth transition between the two and

useful very small amount of useful

information is shown to you. Enough not

to distract from the world outside, but

enough to provide a bit of context when

you need it. and some of

that be in order to bring that into

reality, you have to solve a lot of the

OS problems to make sure it works when

you're integrating the AI into the whole

thing. So every everything you do

launches an agent that answers some

basic question. A good moonshot, you

know, it's crazy. No, but but you know

I think uh we are, you know, but

it's much closer to reality than uh

other moonshots. you know, we expect to

have classes in the hands of developers

later this year and and you know, in

consumer science next year. So, it's an

exciting time. Yeah. Well, extremely

well executed beam all the stuff, you

know, cuz I sometimes you don't know

like somebody commented on a a top

comment on one of the demos of Beam.

They said uh this will either be killed

off in 5 weeks or revolutionize all

meetings in 5 years. And there's very

much Google tries so many things and

sometimes sadly kills off very promising

projects but because there's so many

other things to focus on. I use I use so

many Google products. Google voice I

still use. I'm so glad that's not being

killed off. That's still alive. Thank

you whoever is defending that cuz it's

it's it's awesome and it's great they

keep innovating. I just want to list off

just as a big thank you. So, search

obviously Google revolutionized. Chrome

and all of these could be multi-our

conversations.

Gmail have been singing Gmail praises

forever. Maps incredible technological

innovation on revolutionizing mapping.

Android like we talked about, YouTube

like we talked about. AdSense

uh Google translate for the academic

minded Google

Scholar is incredible when with the book

and also the scanning of the books. So

making all the world's knowledge um

accessible even with that knowledge is a

kind of niche thing which Google Scholar

is. Uh and then obviously with Deep Mind

uh with Alpha Zero, Alpha Fold, Alpha

Evolve, I could talk forever about Alpha

Evolve. That's mind-blowing. All of that

released and as part of that uh set of

things you've released in this year when

uh those brilliant articles were written

about Google is done. Uh and uh like we

talked about pioneering self-driving

cars and quantum computing, which could

be another thing that is

lowkey is scuba diving. its way to

changing the world forever. Uh so

another ptheads slash um micro kitchen

question. If you build

AGI, what kind of question would you ask

it? What would you what would you want

to talk

about? Definitively Google has created

AGI that can basically answer any

question. What topic are you going to?

What where's it where's it? Where are

you going? It's a great question.

Um, maybe it's proactive by then and

should tell me a few things I should

know. But I think if I were to ask it, I

think it'll help us understand ourselves

much better. Um, in a way that'll

surprise us, I think. Um, and so maybe

that's you already see people do it with

the products and so but you know in a

AGI context I think that'll be pretty

powerful at a personal level or or

general human nature at a personal level

like you talking to AGI I think I think

you know

uh there is some chance it'll it'll kind

of understand you in a in a very deep

way. Uh I think uh you know in a

profound way that's a

possibility. Uh I I think there is also

the obvious thing of like maybe it helps

us understand the universe better. Um

you know in a way that expands the

frontiers of our understanding of the

world. Uh that is something super

exciting. But look I I really don't

know. I think you know I haven't haven't

had access to something that powerful

yet. But I think those are all

possibilities. I think on the personal

level asking questions about yourself

could a sequence of questions like that

about what makes me happy. I think we

would be very surprised to learn those

kind of the um a sequence of questions

and answers. We might explore some

profound truths in the way that

sometimes art reveals to us, great books

reveal to us, great conversations with

loved ones reveal. Uh things that are

obvious in retrospect, but are nice when

they're said. Uh but for me, number one

question is about how many alien

civilizations are there? 100%. Are they

That's going to be your first question.

Number one, how many living and dead

alien civilizations? Uh maybe a bunch of

follow-ups like how close are they? Are

they dangerous?

Um, if if there's no alien

civilizations, why? Uh, or if there's no

advanced alien civilizations, but

bacteria like life everywhere, why? What

is the barrier preventing it from

getting to that? Uh, is it because that

there's uh that when you get

sufficiently intelligent, you end up uh

destroying ourselves because you need

competition in order to develop an

advanced civilization. And when you have

competition, it's going to lead to

military conflict and conflict

eventually kills everybody. I don't

know. I'm going to have that kind of

discuss. Get an answer to the Fermy

paradox. Yeah, exactly. And like have a

real discussion about it. I'm not sure

it's a um I'm realizing now with your

answer is a more productive um answer

because I'm not sure what I'm going to

do with that information, but maybe it

speaks to the general human curiosity

that Liz talked about that we're all

just really curious and making the

world's information accessible allows

our curiosity to be satiated some with

AI even more. We can be more and more

curious and learn more about the world

about ourselves. And in so doing, I

always wonder if I don't know if you can

comment on like is it possible to

measure the not the GDP productivity

increase like we talked about but maybe

the whatever that increases

the the breadth and depth of human

knowledge that Google has unlocked with

Google search and now with AI mode with

Gemini is a difficult thing to measure.

many years ago there was a I think it

was a MIT study they just estimated the

impact of Google search and they

basically said it's the equivalent to on

a per person basis it's few thousands of

dollars per year per person right uh

like is the value that got created per

year right and and but it's yeah it's

tough to capture these things right you

kind of take it take it for granted as

these things come uh and and the

frontier keeps moving think but uh you

know how do you measure the value of

something like AlphaFold over time right

and and and and so on so and also the

increase in quality of life when you

learn more I have to say like with uh

some of the programming I do done by AI

for some reason I'm more excited to

program

uh and so the same with knowledge with

discovering things about the world uh it

makes you more excited to be alive it

makes you more curious to and it keeps

the more curious you are, the more

exciting it is to live and experience

the world. And it's very hard to I don't

know if that makes you more productive.

It probably not nearly as much as it

makes you happy to be alive. And that's

a hard thing to measure. The quality of

life increases some of these things

do. As AI continues to get better and

better at everything that humans do

what do you think is the biggest thing

that makes us humans special?

Look, I I

I

think it's stuff taught in the essence

of humanity. There's something about

uh you

know the consciousness we have, what

makes us uniquely human. Maybe the lines

will blur over time uh and and it's

tough to articulate but uh I hope

hopefully you know we live in a world

where if you make resources more

plentiful and make the world lesser of a

zero sum game over time, right? And and

which it's not, but you know in a

resource constraint environment people

perceive it to be, right? and and um and

so I hope the the values of what makes

us uniquely human, empathy, kindness

all

that surfaces more is the aspirational

hope I have. Yeah, it multiplies the

compassion but also the curiosity just

the the banter the debates we'll have

about the meaning of it all. And I I I

also think in the scientific domains

all the incredible work that Deep Mind

is

doing, I think we'll still continue to

to play to explore scientific questions

u mathematical questions, physics

questions, even as AI gets better and

better at helping us solve some of the

questions. Sometimes the question itself

is a really difficult thing. uh both the

right new questions to ask and the

answers to them and and and the

self-discovery process which it'll drive

I think you know our early work with

both co-scientist and alpha evolve just

super exciting to see what gives you

hope about the future of human

civilization

I've always I'm I'm an optimist and you

know I I I look at

um now if you were to say you take the

journey of human civilization. Uh it's

been you know we've relentlessly ma made

the world better right in many ways. At

any given moment in time, there are big

issues to work through. It may look, but

you know, I always ask myself the

question, would you have been born now

or any other time in the past? I most

often, not most often, almost

always would rather be born now, right?

You know, and so that's the

extraordinary thing the human

civilization has accomplished, right?

And like, you know, and we we've kind of

constantly made the world a better

place.

And so something tells me as humanity we

always rise

collectively to drive that uh frontier

forward. So I expect it to be no

different in the future. I agree with

you totally. I'm truly grateful to be

alive in this moment and I'm also really

excited for the future and the work uh

you and incredible teams here are doing

is one of the big reasons I'm excited

for the future. So thank you. Thank you

for all the cool products you've built

and please don't kill Google Voice.

Thank you. We won't. Yeah. Thank you for

talking today. This was incredible.

Thank you. Real pleasure. I appreciate

it. Thanks for listening to this

conversation with Sundar Pachchai. To

support this podcast, please check out

our sponsors in the description or at

lexfreedman.com/sponsors. Shortly before

this conversation, I got a chance to get

a couple of demos that frankly blew my

mind. The engineering was really

impressive. The first demo was Google

Beam and the second demo was the XR

glasses and some of it was caught on

video. So, I thought I would include

here some of those uh video clips.

Hey, Lex. My name is Andrew. I lead the

Google Beam team and we're going to be

excited to show you a demo. We're going

to show you, I think, a glimpse of

something new. So, that's the idea. A

way to connect, a way to feel present

from anywhere with anybody you care

about. Here's Google Beam. This is a

development platform that we've built.

So, there's a prototype here of Google

Beam. There's one right down the

hallway. I'm going to go down and turn

that on in a second. We're going to

experience it together. We'll be back in

the same room. Wonderful.

Wa. Okay. Here we are. All right. This

is real already. Wow. This is real. Good

to see you. This is Google Beam. We're

trying to make it feel like you and I

could be anywhere in the world, but when

these magic windows open, we're back

together. I see you exactly the same way

you see me. It's almost like we're

sitting at the table sharing a table

together. I could learn from you, talk

to you, share a meal with you, get to

know you. So, you can feel the depth of

this. Yeah. Great to meet you. Wow. Wow.

So, for people who probably can't even

imagine what this looks like, there's a

there's a 3D version of It looks real.

You look real. It looks to me it looks

real to you. It looks like you're coming

out of the screen. We quickly believe um

once we're in beam that we're just

together. Like you settle into it.

You're naturally attuned to seeing the

world like this and you just get used to

seeing people this way but literally

from anywhere in the world with these

magic screens. This is incredible. It's

a neat technology. Wow. So I saw demos

of this but they don't come close to the

experience of this. Yeah. I think one of

the top YouTube comments on one of the

demos I saw was like why would I want a

high definition? Like I'm trying to turn

off the camera, but this actually is

this feels like the camera has been

turned off and we're just in the same

room together. This is really

compelling. That's right. I I know it's

kind of late in the day, too, so I

brought you a snack just in case you're

a little bit hungry. But um So what can

you push it further? And it just becomes

Let's Let's try to float it between

rooms. You know, it kind of fades it

from my room into your room. And then

and then you see my hand the depth of my

hand. Of course. Yes, of course. Yeah.

It feels like you um try this. Try give

me a high five. And there's almost a

sensation of feeling touch. You almost

feel because you're so attuned to, you

know, that should be a high five. It

feeling like you could connect with

somebody that way. So, it's kind of a

magical experience. Oh, this is really

nice. How much does it cost? Yeah, with

got a lot of companies testing it. We

just announced that we're going to be

bringing it to offices soon as a set of

products. We've got some companies

helping us build these screens. Um, but

eventually, I think this will be in

almost every screen. There's nothing I'm

not wearing anything. Well, I'm wearing

a suit tie to clarify. I ain't wearing

clothes. This is not CGI. But outside of

that, cool. And the audio is really

good. And you can see me in the same

threedimensional way. Yeah, the audio is

spatialized. So if I'm talking from

here, of course it sounds like I'm

talking from here. You know, if I move

to the other side of the room here. So

these little subtle cues, these really

matter to bring people together. All the

non-verbals, all the emotion, the things

that are lost today. Here it is. We put

it back into the system. You pulled this

off. Holy They pulled it off and

integrated into this. I saw the

translation also. Right. This is the

Yeah, we got a bunch of things. Let me

show you a couple kind of cool things.

Let's do a little bit of work together.

Maybe we could um critique one of your

latest uh um so you know it's you and I

work together, so of course we're in the

same room, but with this superpower, I

can bring other things in here with me.

Um and it's it's nice, you know, it's

like we could sit together, we could

watch something, we could work. Um

we've shared meals as a team together in

this system, but once you do the

presence aspect of this, you want to

bring some other superpowers to it. And

so, you could do review code together.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I've got some uh

slides I'm working on. You know, maybe

you could help me with this. Keep your

eyes on me for a second. I'll slide back

into the center. I didn't really move

but the system just kind of puts us in

the right spot and knows where we need

to be. Oh, so you just turn to your

laptop, the system moves you, and then

it does the overlay automatically. It

kind of morphs the room to put things in

the spot that they need to to be in.

Everything has a place in the room.

Everything has a sense of presence or

spatial consistency and that kind of

makes it feel like we're together with

us and other things. I I should also say

you're not just threedimensional. It

feels like you're leaning like out of

the screen. You you're like coming out

of the screen. You're not just in that

world threedimensional. Yeah, exactly.

Holy crap. Move back to center. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Let let me tell you how this

works. You probably already have the the

premise of it, but there's two things

two really hard things that we put

together. One is a AI video model. So

there's a set of cameras. You asked kind

of about those earlier. There's six

color cameras just like webcams that we

have today. Taking video streams and

feeding them into our AI model and

turning that into a 3D video of you and

I. It's effectively a light field. So

it's kind of an interactive 3D video

that you can see from any perspective.

that's transmitted over to the second

thing and that's a light field display

and it's happening birectionally. I see

you and you see me both in our light

field displays. These are effectively

flat televisions or flat displays but

they have the sense of dimensionality

depth, size is correct. You can see

shadows and lighting are correct and

everything's correct from your vantage

point. So if you move around ever so

slightly and I hold still, you see a

different perspective here. You see kind

of things that were oluded become

reveal. you see shadows that you know

move in the way they should move. All of

that's computed and generated using our

AI video model for you. It's based on

your eye position. Where does the right

scene need to be placed in this light

field display for you just to feel

present? It's real time, no latency. I'm

not seeing lat. You weren't freezing up

at all. No, no, I hope not. I think it's

it's you and I together real time.

That's what you need for real

communication and at a at a quality

level

realistic. Is it possible to do three

people? like is that going to move that

way also? Yeah. Let me let me kind of

show you. So if if she enters the room

with us, you can see her, you can see

me. And if we had more people, you

eventually lose the sense of presence.

You kind of shrink people down. You lose

a sense of scale. So think of it as the

window fits a certain number of people.

If you want to fit a big group of

people, you want, you know, the

boardroom or the big room, you need like

a much wider window. Um if you want to

see, you know, just grandma and the

kids, you can do smaller windows. So

everybody has a seat at the table or

everybody has a sense of where they

belong and there's kind of the sense of

presence that's obeyed. If you have too

many people, you kind of go back to like

2D metaphors that we're used to. People

in tiles placed anywhere for the image

I'm seeing. Did you have to get scanned?

I I mean I see you without being

scanned. So it's just so much easier if

you don't have to wear anything. You

don't have to pre-scan. You just do it

the way it's supposed to happen without

anybody having to learn anything or put

anything on. I thought you had to solve

the the scanning problem, but here you

don't. It's just cameras. It's just

vision.

it it's video. Yeah. We're not trying to

kind of make an approximation of you

because everything you do every day

matters. You know, I cut myself shaving.

I put on a pin. Um all the little kind

of, you know, aspects of you, those just

happen. Um we don't have the time to

scan or kind of capture those or dress

avatars. We we kind of appear as we

appear. And so all that's transmitted

truthfully as it's happening.

Still, how you doing? Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you. So, um as Max

mentioned, got the eye glasses here. We

start with um a foundation of great

glasses, something stylish, lightweight

wearable. And we say, how can we build

great technology and experiences on top

of that? Um, one of the core tenants of

the Android XR platform, this idea of a

multimodal conversational device, see

what you see, hear what you hear. So

we've got a camera, you've got speakers

multiple microphones for speaker

isolation. Um, I'll give you a chance to

try these yourself. Yeah. Sorry, woke it

up there. Whoa. Yeah. So, the first

thing you see, it's a super uh simple

straightforward home screen. So, you

probably see the time, the weather

calendar, appointments there. This is

designed to be sort of your one-stop

shop for quick glanceable information

throughout the day. We want to be

something that's um easy to, you know

get what you need and then go back to

what you're doing. So, you can imagine

you know, turning on the display

getting that quick glance, and then um

continuing on your way. You can be fully

conversational at this point. You can um

ask questions, for example, about the

paintings. You can interrupt. You can

ask follow-up questions. And as I

mentioned before, if you want to at any

time pause, you just tap there on the

right. Gemini, how much does this

painting cost? The painting is called

the bridge of belief leap 1875 by Arman

Gome. It appears to be a print and it

would be impossible to know its cost

without finding the seller. Okay, so

this is fake. I understand. Why do

humans pay so much money for paintings?

People pay a lot for paintings because

of their artistic merit, the artist, the

decent rarity, and for the appreciation.

So, uh, a few more things that we want

to show you just for, uh, sake of time.

Did you go ahead and long press on the

side again to to sleep Gemini there? Um

there you go. Um, did you catch Google

IO last week by any chance? So, you

might have seen on stage the uh, Google

Maps experience very briefly. Want to

give you a chance to get a sense of what

that feels like today. You can imagine

you're walking down the street. If you

look up like you're walking straight

ahead, you get quick turnbyturn

directions. So, you have a sense of what

the next turn is like, sticking your

phone in your pocket. Oh, that's so

intuitive. Sometimes you need that quick

sense of which way is the right way.

Sometimes. Yeah. So you, let's say

you're coming out subway, getting out of

a cab, you can just glance down at your

feet. We have it set up to translate

from Russian to English. I think I get

to wear the glasses. You speak to me if

you don't mind.

I can speak Russian.

I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Tempted to swear. Tempted to say

inappropriate things.

uh I see it transcribed in real time and

so obviously you know based on the uh

different languages and the sequence of

subjects and verbs there's a slight

delay sometimes but it's really just

like subtitles for the real world. Thank

you for this. All right, back to me.

Hopefully watching videos of me having

my mind blown like the apes in 2001

Space Odyssey playing with a monolith

was uh somewhat interesting. Uh like I

said, I was very impressed. And now I

thought if it's okay, I could make a few

additional comments about the episode

and just in general. In this

conversation with Sundar Pachai, I

discussed the concept of the Neolithic

package which is the set of innovations

that came along with the first

agricultural revolution about 12,000

years ago which included the formation

of social hierarchies, the early

primitive forms of government, labor

specialization, domestication of plants

and animals, early forms of trade, large

scale cooperations of humans like that

required to build yes the pyramid. s and

temples like Gobeclete. I think this may

be the right way to actually talk about

the inventions that changed human

history, not just as a single invention

but as a kind of network of innovations

and transformations that came along with

it. And the productivity multiplier

framework that I mentioned in the

episode I think is a nice way to try to

concretize the impact of each of these

inventions under consideration. And uh

we have to remember that each node in

the network of the sort of fast followon

inventions is in itself a productivity

multiplier. Some are additive, some are

multiplicative. So in some sense the

size of the network in the package is

the thing that matters when you're

trying to rank the impact of uh

inventions on human history. The easy

picks for the period of biggest

transformation at least in sort of uh

modern day discourse is the industrial

revolution or even uh in the 20th

century the computer or the internet.

I think it's because it's easiest to

intuit it for modern-day humans the

impact the exponential impact uh of

those technologies. But recently and I

suppose this changes week to week but uh

I have been doing a lot of reading on

ancient human history. So recently my

pick for the number one invention would

have to be the first agricultural

revolution. The Neolithic package that

led to the formation of human

civilizations. That's what enabled the

scaling of the collective intelligence

machine of humanity and for us to become

the early bootloadader for the next

10,000 years of technological progress

which yes includes AI and the tech that

builds on top of AI. And of course it

could be argued that the word invention

doesn't properly apply to the

agricultural revolution. I think

actually uh Yvallo Harrari argues that

it wasn't the humans who were the

inventors but uh a handful of plant

species namely wheat, rice, and

potatoes. This is strictly a fair

perspective, but I'm having fun like I

said with this discussion here. I just

think of the entire earth as a system

that continuously transforms and I'm

using the term invention in that context

asking the question of when was the

biggest leap on the log scale plot of uh

human progress. Will AI AGI ASI

eventually take the number one spot in

this ranking? I think it has a very good

chance to do so due again to the size of

the network of inventions that will come

along with it.

I think we discuss in this podcast

uh the kind of things that would be

included in the so-called AI package but

I think there's uh a lot more

possibilities including uh discussed in

previous podcasts in many previous

podcasts including with Darede uh

talking on the biological innovation

side the science progress side in this

podcast I think we talk about something

that I'm particularly excited about in

the near term which is unlocking the

cognitive capacity of the entire

landscape of brains that is the human

species. Making it more accessible

through education and through machine

translation making information knowledge

and the rapid learning and innovation

process accessible to more humans to the

entire 8 billion if you will. So I do

think language or machine translation

applied to all the different methods

that we use on the internet to discover

knowledge is uh a big unlock. But there

are a lot of other stuff in the

so-called AI package like discuss with

Daario curing all major human diseases.

He really focuses on that in the

machines of love and grace essay. I

think there will be huge leaps in

productivity for human programmers and

semi-autonomous human programmers. So

humans in the loop, but most of the

programming is done by AI agents and

then moving that towards a superhuman AI

researcher that's doing the research

that develops and programs the AI system

in itself. I think there would be huge

transformative effects from autonomous

vehicles. These are the things that we

maybe don't immediately understand or we

understand from an economics

perspective. But there will be a point

when AI systems are able to interpret

understand, interact with the human

world to a sufficient degree to where

many of the manually controlled human

and loop systems we rely on become fully

autonomous. And I think mobility is such

a big part of human civilization that

there will be effects on that that

they're not just

economic but are social, cultural and so

on. And there's a lot more things I

could talk about for a long time. So

obviously the integration utilization of

AI in the creation of art, film

music I think the digitalization and um

automating basic functions of government

and then integrating AI into that

process thereby decreasing corruption

and cost and increasing transparency and

uh efficiency. I think we as humans

individual humans will continue to

transition further and further into

cyborgs. Sort of there's already

a AI in the

loop of the human condition and that

will become increasingly so as AI

becomes uh more powerful. The thing I'm

obviously really excited about is major

breakthroughs in science and not just on

the medical front but uh on physics

fundamental physics which would then

lead to energy

breakthroughs increasing the chance that

we become we actually become a

cardarterf type one civilization and

then enabling us in so doing to do

interstellar exploration of space and

colonization of space. I think they're

also in the near

term much like with the uh industrial

revolution that led

to rapid specialization of skills of

expertise there might be a great sort of

despization. So as the AI systems become

superhuman experts at particular

fields, there might be greater and

greater value to being the

integrator of AIS for humans to be sort

of

generalists. And so the great value of

the human mind will come from the

generalists, not the specialists. That's

a real possibility that that changes the

way we are about the world that we want

to know a little bit of a lot of things

and move about the world in that way.

That could have when passing a certain

threshold a complete shift in who we are

as a collective intelligence as a as a

human species. Also, as an aside, when

uh thinking about the invention that was

the greatest in human history, again

for a bit of fun, we have to remember

that all of them build on top of each

other. And so we need to look at the

delta, the step change on the I would

say impossibly to perfectly measure plot

of exponential human progress. Really

we can go back to the entire history of

life on Earth. and a previous podcast

guest Nick Lane does a great job of this

in his book Life Ascending, listing

these 10 major inventions throughout the

evolution of life on Earth, like DNA

photosynthesis, complex cells, sex

movement, sight, all those kinds of

things. I forget the full list that's on

there, but I think that's so far from

the human experience that my intuition

about let's say productivity multipliers

of those particular invention completely

uh breaks down and uh a different

framework is needed to understand the

impact of these inventions of evolution.

the origin of life on Earth or even the

Big Bang itself, of course, is the OG

invention that set the stage for all the

rest of it. And there are probably many

more turtles under that which are yet to

be discovered. So anyway, we live in

interesting times, fellow humans.

I do believe the set of positive

trajectories for humanity outnumber the

set of negative trajectories but not by

much. So uh let's not mess this up. And

now let me leave you with some words

from French philosopher Jean

Debrier. Out of difficulties grow

miracles. Thank you for listening and

hope to see you next time.