Google CEO: Now is the golden age of AI innovation

At 3 a.m. today, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, delivered an important speech at the global AI summit being held in Paris, France—this is the golden age of AI innovation.

Pichai believes that AI technology is experiencing rapid advancements, with a significant decrease in costs. Over the past 18 months, the cost of processing tokens has dropped from $4 per million to 13 cents, a reduction of up to 97%.

In the field of science, AI has also made significant breakthroughs. For example, Google's protein model AlphaFold has helped over 2.5 million researchers worldwide develop new malaria vaccines and cancer treatments. Google has also made important progress in quantum computing, with its latest Willow quantum chip solving a problem that would take a classical computer a quintillion years to solve in less than five minutes.

From defeating top human Go players with AlphaGo Zero to the protein model AlphaFold, and the Transformer that changed the trajectory of AI globally, Google, as one of the world's AI leaders, is willing to continue participating in and leading this golden age of AI innovation.

Here is the original text from Pichai:

Dear leaders and guests, I am very pleased to gather here with you today.

President Macron, thank you for your invitation and for bringing together such an outstanding group of people here.

AI is a once-in-a-lifetime technology. Discussions focused on collaboration and concrete actions, like today, will drive this work forward.

Today, I want to share some examples to explain why I am so optimistic about AI and its applications, and how we have the opportunity to benefit every person around the world.

For me, improving lives through technology is a personal matter.

I grew up in Chennai, India. It took a long time for each new technology to enter our lives, including rotary phones. We were on a five-year waiting list. When the phone was finally installed at home, it changed our lives.

Previously, to help my mother get her blood test results, I had to travel back and forth for four hours. Sometimes I would rush to the hospital only to be told, "It's not ready yet, come back tomorrow." Now, we can resolve it with just a phone call.

I have witnessed how technology can have a positive impact and make life better. This set me on a path that first took me to the United States and eventually led me to join a startup that was still in its growth phase—Google At that time, I could not imagine that one day I would raise a glass to celebrate the Nobel Prize won by three Google colleagues in just a few weeks, and take my parents for a ride in a self-driving car. All of this is thanks to another technology: AI.

We are still in the early stages of AI development, but I firmly believe that AI will bring about the most profound changes of our lifetime.

Its impact is greater than the proliferation of personal computers and the rise of the mobile internet. Moreover, compared to the internet, it will play an even greater role in facilitating the dissemination of information.

Part of the speech video

In the past 18 months, the cost for developers to process one token has decreased by 97%. Previously, processing 1 million tokens cost $4; now it only costs 13 cents, and I expect this trend to continue.

The result is that intelligence is more accessible and widespread than ever before.

So, it currently has the characteristics of a platform transformation. But what makes it so significant? There are several aspects:

As interactions with AI become more intuitive and humanized, it places us at the center of the experience. Technology begins to feel like a natural extension of our bodies, enhancing human capabilities, bridging gaps in expertise and experience, and breaking down barriers in language and accessibility.

As a truly general-purpose technology, AI is applicable to numerous human activities and various sectors of the economy. Every company, every industry, including the public sector, will apply this technology in its own way.

As AI continues to evolve, it will stimulate innovation, opportunities, and growth in the global economy, driving explosive growth in knowledge, learning, creativity, and productivity, shaping the future in exciting ways.

The opportunities brought by AI are immense. And everyone here has the responsibility to ensure that as many people as possible benefit from it.

Reasons Google Invests in AI

The opportunity to improve lives and transform the world is why Google has been investing in AI for over a decade. We believe this is the most important way to advance our mission of organizing the world's information to make it universally accessible and useful.

Looking back at the significant breakthroughs in the field of AI over the past decade, our researchers have played a crucial role. From key language understanding technologies to AI that defeated the world's top Go players, to the Transformer architecture, which is the foundation of today's generative AI revolution, powering the most advanced AI models.

We are constantly exploring the frontier. Our team's papers on generative AI are cited three times more than those from any other company or educational institution in the world.

Advancing the development of this field means building infrastructure. This includes our network, which consists of over 2 million miles of land and undersea cables. We also have chips specifically designed for AI, known as Tensor Processing Units, which have now reached their sixth generation. In just the past two generations, we have tripled their carbon efficiency This infrastructure has facilitated the development of cutting-edge models like Gemini, which has made breakthroughs in processing multimodal information such as text, images, videos, audio, and code, while also possessing long text processing and agent capabilities.

Our infrastructure also enables us to provide these cutting-edge technologies to developers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.

Finally, we are developing various applications to truly help people around the world with AI. We currently have over 2 billion users across seven products, such as Google Maps, Google Search, and the Android system. They all benefit from our AI innovations and the latest Gemini model.

All of this together constitutes our unique full-stack innovation model, bringing a brand new experience.

How AI Brings a New Experience

I am very excited about some of the experiences brought by AI, including deep research and thinking capabilities. They help people conduct in-depth research on specific topics, like having a personal research assistant that can search for information online, analyze data, and summarize key findings.

I know many of you are starting to think about summer plans.

You can ask a deep research agent: "Where should I vacation in Europe for two weeks in August?" Five minutes later, you will receive a comprehensive analysis that considers factors such as costs, weather, visa requirements, and all information is cited. Moreover, the speed of obtaining information is continuously accelerating.

Alternatively, if you don't want to search the internet but wish for the model to extract information solely from specific documents you provide, that's the magic of NotebookLM. You can imagine turning a pile of obscure documents into an engaging podcast. In just three months, people have generated over 350 years' worth of audio summaries through it. Businesses are using it to create a centralized knowledge base, like an internal expert capable of answering questions about policies, processes, customers, and more.

As models become increasingly multimodal, their understanding of the surrounding world also strengthens. You just need to point your phone camera at an object nearby and ask Project Astra.

What’s truly exciting is that Project Astra brings us one step closer to realizing the vision of a general AI assistant that can seamlessly integrate into our lives across different devices and scenarios. We will soon apply similar functionalities to our products.

How AI Aids Scientific Discovery

These are some examples of how people and businesses are currently using AI.

But in the fields of science and exploration, some of the achievements brought by AI are the most thrilling.

A powerful example is AlphaFold, which has made significant breakthroughs in predicting complex protein structures. The Nobel Prize celebration I mentioned earlier is a direct reflection of the research results from Demis and John at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google Demeis, or should I call him Sir Demeis, is also here today, let's give him a round of applause.

In 2021, we made AlphaFold freely available to the scientific community. Today, over 2.5 million researchers from more than 190 countries are using it to develop new malaria vaccines, cancer treatments, and even enzymes for biodegradable plastics. We estimate that AlphaFold has saved hundreds of thousands of research hours.

Isomorphic Labs is a company under Google's parent company Alphabet, which applies machine learning technology in the drug design process based on the results of AlphaFold, improving the success rate of treatment plans while shortening development time and reducing costs. Moreover, we have many partners around the world who utilize our cloud technology to carry out similar work, such as the French company Servier.

Quantum computing will also help scientists discover new drugs, design more efficient batteries for electric vehicles, and accelerate research progress in nuclear fusion and new energy fields.

This is the next major paradigm shift in the field of computing after AI. We have also made good progress in this area.

Last December, we achieved a breakthrough. Our state-of-the-art Willow quantum chip completed a computational task in less than five minutes, while traditional computers would take 10 to the power of 25 years (that is, 1 followed by 25 zeros, which is several times longer than the age of the universe).

Furthermore, even as the number of quantum chips increases, the error in calculations is decreasing. By the way, AI has also played a role in this. We will continue to make progress on the road to a fully error-corrected quantum computer.

Now, let me share an example that has become a reality: fully autonomous vehicles.

After years of technological research and promotion, the recent progress in autonomous vehicles is astonishing.

In 2024, Waymo will operate in four cities, providing over 4 million rides to passengers.

Recently, one of those rides took my parents and me to a park near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Clearly, I had previously ridden in Waymo's autonomous vehicles, but looking at my father, who is over 80 years old, I gained a new appreciation for the advancements in this technology.

How AI Benefits Society

There are many examples of how AI benefits society. One example is expanding access to information through language.

When Google Translate was first launched, its model relied on the widely available language data on the internet. But this was not the case for most languages in the world, especially in places like Africa.

Last year, we used AI technology to add over 110 new languages to Google Translate, which are used by 500 million people globally. This brings the total number of languages we support to 249, including 60 African languages There will be more in the future.

Another area full of tremendous opportunities is healthcare.

In Paris, we are pleased to collaborate with the Institut Curie to combine their world-class research with our cutting-edge AI technology. Our goal is to improve treatment outcomes for female patients suffering from various rare and deadly cancers, including identifying predictive biomarkers for certain uterine cancers and more accurately predicting breast cancer patients' responses to specific treatment regimens. We are honored to work with the Institut Curie.

In India and Thailand, we have partnered with local organizations to conduct 6 million AI screenings for diabetic retinopathy (a preventable cause of blindness), free of charge for patients.

In addition to healthcare, AI is also improving how communities respond to natural disasters.

Our AI-based FloodHub flood prediction system currently covers over 100 countries and more than 700 million people, providing local communities with a 7-day advance warning even in data-scarce areas.

We are also using AI to map the boundaries of large wildfires in 27 countries, providing accurate information to people. Over the past year, this service has reached 30 million people, helping them evacuate safely during wildfires in Los Angeles last month.

Our new satellite technology, FireSat, will provide us with more powerful tools. It uses advanced sensors and high-resolution images to detect fire sources as small as 5×5 meters. This will bring significant changes to the work of firefighters.

From all these examples, I hope you can see the immense potential of AI in benefiting humanity, promoting economic development, advancing scientific progress, and addressing major challenges facing humanity.

However, these beneficial outcomes do not happen naturally, nor are they guaranteed.

It requires all of us to work together in multiple ways.

Ways to Unlock AI Potential

Let me specify how to do this.

First, we must build an ecosystem composed of innovators and practitioners.

I previously mentioned France's thriving innovation ecosystem; how can we create such innovation hubs in more places?

As Mario Draghi pointed out in his recent report, Europe's productivity depends on the application of these emerging technologies, and Europe's competitiveness depends on productivity. Therefore, promoting technological application is key to significantly enhancing productivity across the entire economy.

The second is infrastructure. We are encouraged by the paths opened by President Trump, President Macron, and other countries in this regard. Just this year, major tech companies have committed to investing $300 billion in capital expenditures Last week, we announced that we expect capital expenditures to be approximately $75 billion in 2025.

Third, we must invest in talent to help people prepare for the future workplace.

I saw a report from the World Economic Forum this year estimating that most jobs in Europe will soon be enhanced by generative AI, with 7% of jobs facing automation. A report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) indicates that the positive effects of AI will be six times greater than the potential displacement effects.

We hope to help the future workforce adapt to these realities.

Over the past decade, the "Google Growth Program" has helped 100 million people around the world enhance their digital skills. Now, we have established a $120 million global AI Opportunity Fund dedicated to providing AI education and training in communities around the world. We will cover 20,000 people across 24 countries in Europe.

Fourth, we must act boldly to advance the most transformative applications of AI while ensuring that it is done responsibly so that everyone can benefit.

This means addressing the limitations of technology, such as issues of accuracy and authenticity, as well as tackling the risks of misuse and abuse, such as those posed by deepfake technology.

AI also brings new complexities, such as its impact on future employment, energy demands, and the issue of the digital divide.

I often think about how fortunate I am to have access to technology, even though the process has been somewhat slow.

But not everyone has that opportunity.

With AI, we have the chance to democratize technology applications from the start, ensuring that the digital divide does not evolve into an AI divide, allowing AI to assist everyone.

The Important Role of Public Policy in AI

Public policy will play a crucial role in the four areas mentioned above.

Successful policies should have the following characteristics:

They should address risks without hindering innovation, progress, and positive impacts.

They should draw on existing laws and fill gaps rather than creating entirely new laws on a large scale.

Policies across countries should be consistent. If the regulatory environment is fragmented, with different rules in different countries and regions, AI cannot thrive.

Finally, governments need to adopt thoughtful strategic approaches to AI, promoting investment in infrastructure, talent development, and technology applications, with active participation from the government itself.

This is an important historical moment.

I believe that when future generations look back on this period, they will see it as the beginning of a golden age of innovation.

But these achievements are not set in stone.

The greatest risk may be missing the opportunity.

Every generation worries that new technologies will make life worse for the next generation, but the reality is often quite the opposite.

When I was a child, I used logarithm tables to solve math problems, and I was not quite used to seeing children learn math with smartphones. But they are doing very well now.

We cannot let entrenched notions of the present hinder future development. We are facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve people's lives with AI Let us go all out and seize this opportunity.

Source: AIGC Open Community, original title: "Google CEO: Now is the Golden Age of AI Innovation"

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