What you need to know
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai disputed claims that top AI developers are struggling to innovate on next-generation models.
- Pichai had strong words for a key competitor, Microsoft, challenging the Redmond firm to a side-by-side test “any day, any time.”
- The executive also criticized Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, saying “they’re using someone else’s models.”
Google released its next-generation set of artificial intelligence models, Gemini 2.0, today alongside glimpses of longer-term AI projects. But even before the company’s ambitious announcements, Google’s leader expressed confidence in its AI developments. At the now-concluded Dealbook Summit, hosted by the New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had strong words for his company’s competitors, and separately, those critical of AI’s future (via Windows Central).
Pichai, who has led Google through a challenging period that included massive layoffs and a shift toward AI, is still confident there is more progress to be made.
“When you start out quickly scaling up, you can throw more compute and you can make a lot of progress, but you definitely are going to need deeper breakthroughs as we go to the next stage,” Pichai said at the Dealbook Summit. “So you can perceive it as there’s a wall, or there’s some small barriers.”
The chief executive appears to be in agreement with other industry leaders, such as OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, that AI models aren’t hitting a so-called wall. In other words, some skeptics believe that AI development will grind to a halt following significant advancements in 2023 and 2024.
“I don’t subscribe to the wall notion,” Pichai said.
However, that doesn’t mean the top boss at Google doesn’t expect there to be a slowdown as AI development progresses. “I think the progress is going to get harder when I look at ’25,” the Google CEO explained. “The low-hanging fruit is gone. The hill is steeper.”
Google is competing with a few notable competitors as it searches for AI breakthroughs, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft. Pichai called out one competitor, Microsoft, specifically when Andrew Ross Sorkin revisited Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s negative comments toward Google from earlier this year.
“I would love to do a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft’s own models and our models any day, any time,” Pichai quipped. “They’re using someone else’s models.”
Pichai is referring to Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar investment in OpenAI, which gives it access to the newest GPT models that power Microsoft Copilot. Google, meanwhile, uses its in-house Gemini models for its AI services.
Now, the chief executives at both Google and Microsoft have thrown a bit of shade at one another in 2024. As the AI race heats up, this friendly feud will be yet another storyline to watch.