Google boss: “Artificial intelligence is too important not to regulate it”

Mr. Pichai, which artificial intelligences do you actually use in everyday life?

You know, one interesting thing about AI is that over time we take it for granted and stop thinking of it as AI when we use it. When we announced Google Photos in 2015, the entire product was powered by AI. Anyone could suddenly search their photos and find anything. I also use it all the time now while traveling around Europe. I sent pictures. It shows me pictures from my last trip here. All of this is powered by AI and I enjoy using that.

Do you have another example?

Google Lens is one of my favorite products. We have more than 12 billion visual searches every month. Lens is based on image recognition, on AI. You can point your phone and ask questions. And of course I also use our new chatbot Bard. And this idea of ​​being able to talk directly to the AI ​​and have it come up with creative answers, that’s something I really like as well.

So how do you use Bard? We German users don’t know it yet, we haven’t had a chance to take a look at it yet.

A while ago I was planning my father’s 80th birthday. So I asked Bard what I should do. I already knew most of the good suggestions, but it was nice to see them all in one place. Bard suggested I make a photo album, which I actually did. And to Germany: we will soon be here with Bard.

Is there a secret AI to help you manage Google?

Of course, we have also been using AI internally for a long time. For example, to help our software developers with programming. We use AI to cool our data centers more efficiently. We are increasingly using them to improve customer service and to get better analytics within the company. We’re still in the early stages, but we’re going to use them more and more.

Six years ago you said: We are witnessing a new shift in information technology – away from mobile-first to an AI-first world, AI first. What has happened within Google since then? Is there still any project or product that can do without AI?

The tipping point for us is about a decade ago when the AI ​​systems got really good at image recognition. For us it was a breakthrough. As a result, I aligned Google with the fact that we are first and foremost an AI company. Since then, we have been driving research and development of AI to the cutting edge. Year after year we have incorporated this into our products and continue to do so. That’s why we introduced the Smart Reply feature in Gmail, for example, a few years ago. Then the technology got a little bit better, and we added the smart writing feature, and now we’re building what’s called generative AI. When I think about AI and how best to use it, it’s in the context of the products that people use and how we can make them more helpful for everyone – because that’s where we want to start with our innovations. It’s not about using AI for the sake of AI. It’s simply one of the most powerful technologies out there to improve our products.