Sundar Pichai: Google CEO Chasing AI Race He Invented
Sundar Pichai leads the company that invented transformer architecture, then had to catch up when OpenAI turned it into a product first.
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Sundar Pichai has led Google since 2015 and Alphabet since 2019. He runs the company that invented the architecture behind today’s language models, then had to chase a competitor who turned it into a product faster. The story of Google’s recent years is the story of making up that lost ground.
They Invented It and Gave It Away
The transformer architecture that powers all large language models was created at Google in 2017. The company also had its own conversational models long before ChatGPT, but didn’t release them, fearing damage to its search engine’s reputation. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Google declared an internal code red and accelerated its work, first as Bard, now as Gemini. In 2023, Pichai merged two labs, DeepMind and Google Brain, into a single unit under Demis Hassabis.
The Toughest Decision of His Tenure
Google makes money from ads in search results. An answer generated by a model takes clicks away from websites, but also takes space from ads. Introducing AI Mode and AI Overviews means deliberately cannibalizing your own business model so you don’t lose the market to someone else. It’s the most interesting bet in the entire industry, and we don’t yet know how it will end.
How He Differs from Competitors
Google is the only one that has everything at once: its own models, its own chips to train them, its own cloud, browser, mobile OS, and search engine. No competitor controls the entire chain. The weakness is the pace of decision-making in a large corporation and the need to protect a profitable advertising business, which OpenAI and Anthropic don’t have to do.
Google · Your sourcesQuantslant higher in your Google - one clickAdd to preferred sources →Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the CEO of Google?
Sundar Pichai, since 2015, and since 2019 he also leads parent company Alphabet.
Did Google invent the technology behind ChatGPT?
The transformer architecture was created at Google in 2017. OpenAI built a product on it earlier and more broadly.
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