FOR SEEING INTO OUR AI-ASSISTED FUTURE

SOON AFTER BEING NAMED Google CEO in 2015, he'd declared that the world was entering an AI-first era.

- BY HARRY MCCRACKEN

SUNDAR PICHAI, CEO OF GOOGLE AND PARENT COMPANY ALPHABET

SUNDAR PICHAI WAS BLINDSIDED BY CHATGPT.

SOON AFTER BEING NAMED Google CEO in 2015, he'd declared that the world was entering an AI-first era. He went on to bet his stewardship of the entire company on his belief that the technology would be "an intelligent assistant helping you throughout your day," as he put it in his first shareholder letter. Yet his prescience hadn't prevented OpenAI from swooping in on November 30, 2022, with the first product that truly demonstrated the epoch-shifting power of generative AI, a breakthrough that had emerged from Google's research labs in the first place.

Pichai remembers his instinctive response to ChatGPT: “Wow, this technology is going to diffuse earlier and faster than we were expecting.” The feeling, he says, was “uncomfortably exciting.” He knew that if AI was entering hyperdrive ahead of schedule, Google would have to scramble.

Pichai is sharing this memory in a conference room at Google's expansive office at Manhattan's Pier 57, a former steamship cargo facility. As we talk, in early January, he radiates his usual air of genial unflappability—the same manner with which he apparently received the arrival of ChatGPT just over three years ago. “I felt we had all the right building blocks in place,” he explains. “And so my genuine reaction was, ‘How do we meet that moment with the resources we have?’ I was deeply focused on what I needed to do.”