Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai dismisses AI job fears, emphasizes expansion plans

In a Bloomberg interview Wednesday night in downtown San Francisco, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pushed back against concerns that AI could eventually make half the company’s 180,000-person workforce redundant. Instead, Pichai stressed the company’s commitment to growth through at least next year. “I expect we will grow from our current engineering phase even into next year, because it allows us to do more,” Pichai said, adding that AI is making engineers more productive by eliminating tedious tasks and enabling them to focus on more impactful work. Rather than replacing workers, he referred to AI as “an accelerator” that will drive new product development, thereby creating demand for more employees. Alphabet has staged numerous layoffs in recent years, though so far, cuts in 2025 appear to be more targeted than in previous years. It reportedly parted ways with less than 100 people in Google’s cloud division earlier this year and, more recently, hundreds more in its platforms and devic ... Read full article.