Aside from laying off thousands of employees recently, some of Google’s workforce also decided to leave the company to join rivals like OpenAI. Alphabet and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai finally broke his silence regarding this issue. Here’s the news story. 

Sundar Pichai breaks silence on Google employees moving to rivals like OpenAI

Interestingly, he faced this issue on an optimistic note.

The Alphabet CEO said those former Google employees who left the company had created as many as 2,000 startups, and this is something he admires. He also said those employees would eventually return to the company as some of these firms will become his company’s cloud customers in the future.  

“Googlers have left to create over 2,000 startups, last I counted, and I think that’s great. Some of them are cloud customers down the line for us. Some of them come back. I think it’s healthy,” Pichai said in an interview with Bloomberg.

This statement of his is interesting because, currently, Google competes with OpenAI regarding artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. 

Late last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI tool that is capable of doing things like answering questions, assisting the user with tasks, and even coding, among many others. 

Then, later, Google launched Bard, also an AI tool, but meant to be one of the most formidable competitors of ChatGPT. Like ChatGPT, Bard is also capable of coding, answering questions, and helping people with their needs. 

Pichai on layoffs

In the Bloomberg interview, the Alphabet CEO was also asked about its massive layoffs earlier this year and whether Google is satisfied with this cost-cutting move. 

While Pichai generally kept mum on this, he said, “Our work toward sharpening our focus—I view it as enduring work. We are constantly trying to make the company more efficient,” he said.

Google announced the layoffs of 12,000 employees last January. 

Pichai urges caution amidst AI’s dominance

Moreover, Pichai also spoke about the rising popularity of AI. While he said it is a “competitive moment,” he actually urged caution amidst the hype for this technology.

It could be remembered that Pichai sat down in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” last April to also talk about the growth of AI.  

He said AI is somewhat of a “threat” as it is bound to disrupt and replace jobs, particularly those of knowledge workers, which include writers, accountants, architects, and even software engineers. 

“We need to adapt as a society for it (AI)… This is going to impact every product across every company,” he stated. “For example, you could be a radiologist, if you think about five to 10 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.’”

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