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Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai says artificial intelligence has been a key focus of the Google parent since 2016, back when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI was in its infancy. After all, Google researchers invented the “T” in GPT (as in generative pre-trained transformer).
It was a critical innovation that made conversational search using large language models possible. Somehow though, Google missed the big chatbot moment and has been playing catchup ever since. But Pichai, who sat down for an exclusive interview with The Circuit with Emily Chang, doesn't seem worried.
“We weren't the first company to do search. We weren't the first company to do email. We weren't the first company to build a browser,” he says.
“So I view this AI as we are in the earliest possible stages.” In other words, Pichai is playing the long game, and says Google—which dominates key real estate on the web—has plenty of time to win. Google's effort to reclaim the AI microphone has nevertheless experienced more than a few hiccups.
When the company unveiled its Gemini image generator in February, users quickly found weaknesses. Requests for depictions of historical scenes yielded awkward images of Asian Nazis and Black US founding fathers. The company's effort to ensure its AI systems didn't perpetuate human biases had apparently backfired.
“We got it wrong,” says Pichai, 51, who contends the incident was a case of good intentions gone awry. Google immediately shut down Gemin.
