Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, responded to concerns that AI could eventually render half of the company’s 180,000-person workforce redundant.
During a Bloomberg interview in downtown San Francisco this week, Pichai, underscored the organization’s dedication to expansion for the duration of another year.
“I anticipate that we will continue to expand from our current engineering phase into the upcoming year, as it enables us to accomplish more,” stated Pichai.
He also noted that AI is increasing the productivity of engineers by eradicating repetitive duties and allowing them to concentrate on more critical work.
He characterized AI as “an accelerator” that would stimulate the development of new products, thereby generating a need for additional employees, rather than as a means of replacing workers.
Alphabet has implemented numerous redundancies in recent years; however, the reductions in 2025 appear to be more focused than those of previous years.
Earlier this year, it purportedly terminated the employment of less than 100 individuals in Google’s cloud division, and more recently, hundreds more in its platforms and devices unit.
The reductions in 2024 and 2023 were significantly more severe, with 12,000 employees being terminated in 2023 and at least another 1,000 employees being laid off last year.
In the future, Pichai cited Alphabet’s expanding ventures, including Waymo autonomous vehicles, quantum computing initiatives, and YouTube’s explosive development, as evidence of the ongoing emergence of innovation opportunities.
He observed the immense size of YouTube in India alone, with over 100 million channels and 15,000 channels possessing over one million subscribers.
Pichai once stated that it is “pointless” to attempt to consider too far in advance but he also recognized the legitimacy of concerns regarding job displacement.
When asked about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent comments that AI could erode half of entry-level white collar jobs within five years, he stated, “I respect that… I think it’s important to voice those concerns and debate them.”
Pichai was questioned about the limitations of AI and the possibility that the world may never attain artificial general intelligence, which refers to AI that is as intelligent as humans in all aspects of life, as the interview concluded.
“There is a significant amount of forward progress to be made with the paths we are currently on, including the set of ideas we are working on today and some of the newer ideas we are experimenting with,” he stated.
“I am extremely optimistic about the prospect of significant progress.
“However,” he continued, “you have always experienced these technology curves where you may reach a transient plateau. Therefore, are we currently on an unwavering trajectory toward AGI? I am uncertain that anyone can provide a definitive answer.
