Google’s next CEO is likely to have an AI companion by their side, said current Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Pichai, who spoke at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco on June 7, offered a compelling vision of a future where the top executives of an organisation work together with advanced AI agents to run a company. Pichai underlined his belief that AI will continue to be a tool for humans, not a replacement for humans.
When Pichai was asked about the qualities of his successor at Google, the CEO said that whoever takes the helm will have an “extraordinary AI companion” by their side to run the company and shape the future of the world.
This remark comes amid intense global debate about AI’s rapidly expanding capabilities and its potential impact on human employment. While some predict widespread job displacement, Pichai’s comments suggest a more symbiotic relationship between human leadership and AI.
AI to be a partner in leadership, says Google CEO
Pichai admitted that he has been experimenting with AI coding tools like Replit and Cursor for “vibe coding.” He described using these AI assistants to effortlessly build custom webpages through simple prompts, bypassing the need for extensive manual programming.
“I just view this as making engineers dramatically more productive, getting a lot of the mundane aspects out of what they do,” Pichai explained. He consistently framed AI not as a job-killer but as a powerful “co-pilot” or “accelerator” that enhances human productivity and enables organisations to tackle more ambitious projects.
It seems that Pichai and his firm intend to showcase in practice. Despite a rapid rise in the use of AI, Alphabet has committed itself to hiring more human resources, particularly for the engineering department. Pichai also addressed concerns about artificial general intelligence (AGI), acknowledging that while AI models excel in tasks like coding, they still make fundamental errors. “So are we currently on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t think anyone can say for sure,” he stated.
