GoKawiilFour days ago, I arrived in Mountain View, California, to cover my first Google I/O developer conference, expecting the showmanship and AI hype I'm accustomed to hearing at events like this. Don't get me wrong -- I definitely got my share of AI promo as Google becomes, in the words of one of its employees, "unabashedly agent-first."
But really, what I found was a city split in two.
The Google I/O keynote glittered with glossy demos. Execs took the stage to talk about lifestyle uses for new AI, staged scenes of curated travel and polished demos of parties planned by assistants. Backstage and onstage, the message was boundless possibility. Outside the tents, on the streets and in the rideshare queue, the mood felt decidedly different.
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My Uber driver from the airport wove me through downtown Palo Alto. He asked why I was in town, and after I told him, he nodded and said that he had recently been laid off from Google. He was polite and pragmatic, talking about picking up ridesharing work full-time and leaning on friends and family. He asked what I thought of the company and its recent innovations before we parted.
It was an ordinary conversation, but it stuck with me because here was a human consequence of a company that, on stage, was selling experiences that felt aimed at the 1%, while most of us are just focused on basic stability amid the rising cost of living.
My colleague Andrew Lanxon recently wrote a fantastic commentary about how Google assumes we're all rich, hot, young and fit, and did I mention rich? There's been some pushback to this deluge of demos and marketing that show how Google's tech can be used to plan elaborate trips abroad and shopping sprees, and oh, Paris Hilton is here, because why not?
Marketing is supposed to be somewhat aspirational, but it shouldn't be alienating. And it's led many to wonder: Who is this tech even for? It doesn't seem to be resonating.
No, really, who's all this AI for?
That tension followed me as I went to work at I/O this year. I was able to sit down with Sameer Samat, president of the Android Ecosystem at Google, and he said that he thinks the key is "to be very intentional about the use of this technology," and that the goal is "making this technology accessible to people and making it feel like it can help them in their daily life." So I asked him directly about the recent pushback (as reflected in Lanxon's earlier story) and how it seems that many people really do not feel this tech is accessible to them.
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