In a recent Bloomberg interview, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai dismissed fears that artificial intelligence could make half of Google’s 180,000-person workforce obsolete. Speaking Wednesday evening in San Francisco, Pichai said AI is boosting engineering productivity by eliminating repetitive tasks and freeing teams to focus on innovation, calling the technology “an accelerator” rather than a replacement.
He projected that Alphabet will continue growing its workforce into next year, highlighting emerging areas like Waymo, quantum computing, and YouTube’s rapid global expansion. While acknowledging the legitimacy of concerns raised by peers such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei about white-collar job loss, Pichai said the conversation is necessary but not definitive.
On artificial general intelligence, he said progress is promising but cautioned that long-term outcomes remain uncertain.