Google Chief Executive Warns AI Could Affect ‘Every Product of Every Company’

Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai has hinted that society is not prepared for the swift advancement of artificial intelligence (AI).

In an interview with a US broadcaster, Pichai said that "We need to adapt as a society for it," arguing that jobs that would be disrupted by AI would include so-called "knowledge workers," such as writers, accountants, architects and even software engineers.

"This is going to impact every product across every company. For example, you could be a radiologist, if you think about five to ten years from now, you're going to have an AI collaborator with you. You come in the morning, let's say you have a hundred things to go through, it may say, 'these are the most serious cases you need to look at first'," the Google CEO noted.

Touching upon AI’s repercussions, he warned that the scale of the problem of disinformation as well as fake news and images will be "much bigger," claiming that "it could cause harm."

When asked whether society is prepared for AI technology like Google’s Bard, Pichai said, "On one hand, I feel no, because the pace at which we can think and adapt as societal institutions, compared to the pace at which the technology is evolving, there seems to be a mismatch."

On the other hand, he made it clear he remains upbeat because compared with other technologies in the past, "the number of people who have started worrying about the implications" did so early on.

'New Frontier': Scientists Lay Out Plan for Building AI Using Human Brain Cells

1 March 2023, 16:45 GMT

The remarks come after Elon Musk, along with a group of AI experts and industry executives, called for a six-month pause in the development of AI systems that are more advanced than GPT-4.

In an open letter published in late March, Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, among other signatories, pointed out that the immediate pause should be public, verifiable and include all public actors.

According to the letter, "AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs."

The letter urged AI labs and independent experts to use the pause "to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts."

The developments were preceded by the public debut of GPT-4, a new large language model that powers ChatGPT of the chatbot developer OpenAI. GPT-4 is capable of recognizing both text and images, as well as solving complex problems with greater accuracy.

Google CEO: Society not Ready for AI Advancement