Will AI eventually render human jobs obsolete? Google CEO Sundar Pichai offers a reassuring and insightful perspective, asserting that AI will serve as a powerful companion, enhancing the capabilities of human coders rather than replacing them.
In a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, Pichai says that AI has helped the company grow its productivity exponentially. “I think a few things. Looking at Google, we’ve given various stats around 30% of code now uses AI-generated solutions or whatever it is. But the most important metric, and we carefully measure this, how much has our engineering velocity increased as a company due to AI. And it’s tough to measure, and we rigorously try to measure it. And our estimates are that number is now at 10%.” Pichai said.
AI to make lives of human coders easier
With that number, Pichai says that Google plans to hire more engineers by next year to expand its think team. “Now, across the company, we’ve accomplished a 10% engineering velocity increase using AI. But we plan to hire more engineers next year. Because the opportunity space of what we can do is expanding too. And so, I think hopefully, at least in the near to mid-term, for many engineers, it frees up more and more of the, even in engineering and coding, there are aspects which are so much fun. You’re designing, you’re architecting, you’re solving a problem. There’s a lot of grunt work, which all goes hand in hand,” added the CEO.
“But it hopefully takes a lot of that away, makes it even more fun to code, frees you up more time to create, problem-solve, brainstorm with your fellow colleagues, and so on. So, that’s the opportunity there. And second, I think it’ll attract, it’ll put the creative power in more people’s hands, which means people create more, that means there’ll be more engineers doing more things.” Pichai further added.
Pichai’s stance underscores a shift in how we perceive the future of work. He acknowledges the remarkable ability of AI to automate routine and repetitive coding tasks. This includes generating basic code, identifying and suggesting fixes for bugs, and even assisting with basic script writing. Such advancements are not seen as a threat but as a fundamental tool that will liberate engineers from the more mundane aspects of their roles.
