Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, advises against rushing to use AI without control.
When asked what keeps him awake at night concerning AI in a 60 Minutes interview, Pichai stated, “the urgency to develop and deploy it in a good way, but at the same time it can be very damaging if deployed incorrectly.”
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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc. and Google, said in an interview aired Sunday that the drive to use artificial intelligence technology must be well-regulated to prevent any negative consequences.
When asked what keeps him awake at night concerning AI in a 60 Minutes interview, Pichai stated, “the urgency to develop and deploy it in a good way, but at the same time it can be very damaging if deployed incorrectly.”
Based in Mountain View, California Google has been a pioneer in developing and using AI throughout its services. Google Lens and Google Pictures rely on the company’s image-recognition capabilities, while Google Assistant benefits from years of research into natural language processing.
Yet, its deployment of the technology has been slow and cautious, whereas OpenAI’s ChatGPT has set up a race to move forward with AI tools at a far quicker speed.
“We don’t have all of the answers yet, and technology is developing quickly,” Pichai remarked. “Does that keep me up at night?” Absolutely.”
Google is currently playing catch-up in its efforts to include generative AI into its products – software that can generate text, graphics, music, or even video depending on user input.
ChatGPT and another OpenAI product, Dall-E, demonstrated the technology’s promise, and a slew of companies, from Silicon Valley to China’s internet heavyweights, are now proposing their own versions.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged global technology businesses to collaborate in developing standards and proper safeguards, saying that any delay in growth would “merely benefit China.”
Despite the industry’s sense of urgency, Pichai warned against firms becoming entangled in the competitive dynamics. And he draws lessons from OpenAI’s more direct approach and the introduction of ChatGPT.
“One of their ideas is that you don’t want to release a technology like this when it’s very, very strong because it gives society no chance to adjust,” Pichai explained. “I believe that’s a reasonable point of view. I believe there are responsible individuals there, as well as us, trying to figure out how to approach this technology.”
Among the pitfalls of generative AI that Pichai mentioned are so-called deep fake videos, in which people are shown saying things they did not say. Such blunders highlight the necessity for regulation, according to Pichai.
“There must be penalties for making deep fake videos that hurt society,” he stated. “Everyone who has worked with AI for a long knows that this is something so unusual and so profound that we would need social rules to think about how to adapt.”