Sundar Pichai And HE Omar AlOlama Discuss The Future Of AI
"There's going to be no technology which would impact your economy as much as AI," the CEO of Google and Alphabet told the the UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications.
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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google (as well as its parent company, Alphabet), joined the UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, HE Omar Sultan AlOlama, to discuss the future of artificial intelligence (AI) through a virtual fireside chat at the 2025 World Governments Summit in Dubai.
While the discussion focused on the transformative impact of AI development, quantum computing, and Google's broader technological vision, Pichai also spoke of how his personal journey has made him an advocate for technology, and how he supports innovation at one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
“At this moment, I’m spending a lot of my time on AI," Pichai shared. "The rate of progress, how profound the technology is — it’s the first time I’ve felt that even if I travel for a couple of weeks, I have to catch up on the progress that’s just happened in that short time. You've rarely seen a technology that is progressing so fast.”
Reflecting on recent AI breakthroughs, Pichai noted that DeepSeek's breakthrough as being a reinforcement of just how accessible - and impactful - AI can be. “I think the DeepSeek team has done very, very good work," he said. "But for me, the lessons learned, stepping back, it shows how global this AI development is. It's happening all around the world. It's a moment of excitement and inflection everywhere. You can see there is frontier model development happening around the world. I think what caught people's attention with DeepSeek was that you could have an efficient model, open source, and something everyone can immediately access. I think that creates a lot of excitement."
Meanwhile, AlOlama, after pointing out that around 8.5 billion searches are done every day (with Google claiming around 49 percent of monthly internet traffic), asked Pichai whether the rise of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT poses a challenge to Google’s dominance in search. Pichai replied that he was confident that Google’s role as an information provider is more relevant today than ever before, noting that Google is "in the business of providing information."
“People's information needs are exploding," he explained. "So, it feels very far from a zero-sum construct to me. Having said that, we are continuing to see strong growth in search. We have recently evolved search pretty profoundly with AI overviews, and we have found that people are engaging with it more. It's leading to a growth in search usage across all demographics.”
Acknowledging the competitive nature of the AI landscape and Google's role in the technology in the future, Pichai said, "Taking the long-term view, I think AI is going to help expand the opportunity space not just for us, but for others working there too. With the kind of agentic capabilities that it'll have, you can not only ask questions, you can get things done. I think it can help you be much more productive across a range of domains. Given how big the landscape is, I definitely expect us to be a leading player, but it's natural to me that there'll be others doing well in the space as well. Just like the internet, there have been other companies. AI would be no different."
A Forward-Thinking Approach To AI
Pichai also stressed that governments "want to focus on the AI opportunity," lauding the UAE's efforts in the field as very farsighted, giving the example of AlOlama's appointment as Minister of AI in 2017, as well as the recent initiative by the Dubai Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DCAI) to train one million individuals in AI prompt engineering over the next three years as evidence of the country's rapid adoption of the technology.
"There's going to be no technology which would impact your economy as much as AI," Pichai declared. "Make sure you're investing in your country's infrastructure, skilling your population, unlocking data in the public sector, and using that data to come up with solutions using AI."He also noted that responsible AI deployment is key. "On the risk side, all of us need to be responsible with this technology," he said. "It's a very powerful technology, it can be a self-improving technology. Making sure you're developing competency to evaluate risk, assess risks, and take the appropriate steps over time is going to be something we all need to invest in. There have to be global standards around it."
AlOlama then posed a hypothetical scenario to Pichai, asking what decisions he would make if he were in the minister’s position. In response, Pichai outlined four key areas of focus, which include supporting infrastructure, skilling, unlocking data, and balanced regulation. “I think most people are underestimating the infrastructure transition," he added. "Skilling is another important area. I think the amount of work that needs to be done to help your population get ready and the transition is something there needs to be a lot of effort put into it. I think the much tougher challenge has been encouraging governments to unlock data. Being at the forefront of that is a real opportunity. Then finally, how do you have balanced regulation? All of that needs to be in the toolkit. Above all, I would say being excited at this moment, embracing innovation, because it is something that's coming at us in a fast way, is going to be very, very important."
The Future of Commuting (And Computing)
AlOlama and Pichai also discussed the future of Alphabet's autonomous driving technology, Waymo, and how to accelerate its adoption. “I've been super excited about Waymo for a while, and I think we're really hitting our stride in the past 12 months or so,” said Pichai, emphasizing that the company has recently made progress in ensuring the safety of Waymo’s self-driving technology.
He pointed to AI advancements as a key driver of Waymo’s success. “Thanks to the work with AI we've done over the years, we now have over 33 million rider miles driven, and Waymo had 78 percent fewer injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers," he said. "Last year, Waymo served over four million passenger trips, and we are now averaging over 150,000 paid rides per week in the US across San Francisco, Phoenix, and LA.”
Looking ahead, Pichai also revealed the company's plans to expand beyond the United States. “We are now expanding," he said. "We have a goal of doing this in 10 new cities in 2025. We'll be doing our first international testing in Japan.” Here, AlOlama emphasized the UAE's commitment to innovation, stating, "Let's put the UAE on that list and on that roadmap," to which Pichai responded, "Looking forward to it."
The Minister also probed Pichai about what new jobs are likely to emerge as self-driving technology becomes mainstream, and whether new platforms might make commuting more engaging. Pichai drew a parallel to the early days of the internet, showing how jobs have evolved over the past 80 years.
“Maybe two observations," Pichai said. "One is there was a recent study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economist David Autor which said if you go back to 1940, since then, 60 percent of the new jobs that have been created kind of didn't exist before that. Just imagine even five years after the internet started in the year 2000, envisioning that there could be someone called a YouTube creator. Today, there are millions of creators. We have to keep that potential in mind. To me, there is no doubt in the AI-driven world, just like the internet did, there'll be many, many new opportunities created."
Pichai emphasized that while AI will bring significant changes, it will also open doors to new possibilities across various fields. "I think over time, there'll be value and a premium placed on human experiences and human interactions," Pichai said. "We've seen that with chess. Chess is more popular than ever before. While the technology is going to be very prevalent, it's going to improve productivity, it will cause disruption, but it'll also create many, many new types of opportunities. When I look at our latest video creation models, it's going to enable many, many more people to create content than ever before."
The Minister and Pichai also discussed quantum computing, a rapidly evolving field in computer science that promises to solve problems that even super computers cannot currently solve. “The progress in quantum is palpably exciting," Pichai said. "We've been focused on it for a long time. I think we have the most advanced state-of-the-art effort anywhere in the world.” Pichai also highlighted a recent breakthrough where Google performed a computation in five minutes that would have taken the world’s fastest supercomputers over 10 septillion years.
However, he noted that, while quantum computing will soon revolutionize computing, it is too early for governments to regulate the technology, stressing that encryption is likely the first area that will need to be addressed. “Beyond that, I would think about, no different from AI, how do you set up a quantum cluster to do some pioneering research work in the next three-to-five-year time frame.”
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"Reward Risk, Don't Punish Failure"
AlOlama also asked Pichai about how the CEO, who has been at the helm of Google since 2015, what makes how he fosters innovation at the tech giant, and Pichai replied that there is no secret sauce, but rather a combination of factors that makes Google a magnet for talent.
“Our founders really set a very ambitious framework for the company," he said. "We used to say we need to have a healthy disregard for the impossible. We always felt that if you encourage people to work on very ambitious things, even if you end up failing, well, there are many advantages to doing that. One, you have very little competition. Waymo or quantum or AI are great examples. You attract the best people. Even if you end up not achieving that ambitious goal, whatever you end up doing will be very, very valuable."
He added, "You encourage optimism, you really push people to take risks, and you don't punish failures. So it's a combination of all that. We've always had to experiment. For example, just about two years ago, I set up a Labs group so that people could have small teams to go ship stuff, and out of which we shipped something like NotebookLM last year, which ended up being very, very popular. You have to constantly tinker, and make sure you're innovating from the ground up.”
Noting that Google has tabled 296 projects, AlOlama asked Pichai how the company decides when to continue a project, and when to stop. Pichai was clear that not all projects succeed, but that innovation and judgment are key to knowing how much to invest in each project, explaining that Google's approach involves long-term bets and short-term evaluations that take into consideration the type of project and its span. “In 2015, when I became CEO, I said the company is going to be AI first, and we decided to take a full-stack approach to AI," Pichai said. "We started building our tensor processing units in 2017. When you make these long-term technology bets, AI, Waymo, quantum, and those you know, it will eventually happen. At that foundational layer, you take a long-term view and you don't waver at all."
He added that, while technology like AI and quantum computing were clear winners from the start, other technologies on the application level had to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. “At the application layer, you are right - when you make efforts to build products, you're going to have some successes, and some things won't work out," Pichai said. "There's judgment there as to when you keep pushing through, and at what point you see it's not getting traction, your approach is wrong, and you have to course correct. We don't always get it right, but it's important to go through that reading process too. That's what keeps the company fresh, and you're constantly pushing to do new things.”
"Find Something That Resonates With You"
Toward the end of the conversation, AlOlama asked Pichai about his personal journey, seeking insight into the factors that transported him from a village in India, to becoming the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies. Reflecting on his path, Pichai credited his early – if scarce – experiences with technology as a driving force. "I had to wait a long time to get access to technology, so growing up, every moment was very, very vivid for me," Pichai shared. "I saw firsthand how it changed my life, and the lives of people around me. I had this passion to kind of get access to technology, and to make sure I was working on things that would bring technology to as many people as possible."
Pichai noted that being excited by a mission and being challenged have been key to his success. "When I read Google's mission statement, in which it said it wanted to make information universally accessible, that's what really excited me to come to Google," Pichai revealed. "Part of it is being, you need to get excited by a mission. Beyond that, I would say challenging yourself to work with people who are better than you. You learn and grow when you're pushing yourself to be with people who you think are better than you in many, many ways. I've strived to do that over the years. I would encourage everyone, each person, the path is different, but if you can find something you know that resonates with you in a deeper way to your heart, I think that brings out the best work you can do."
Encouraging others to pursue what resonates with them, Pichai added, “I would encourage everyone, each person, the path is different, but if you can find something you know that resonates with you in a deeper way to your heart, I think that brings out the best work you can do.”