Sundar Pichai is CEO of Google and Alphabet. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep471-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/sundar-pichai-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Sundar's X: https://x.com/sundarpichai Sundar's Instagram: https://instagram.com/sundarpichai Sundar's Blog: https://blog.google/authors/sundar-pichai/ Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/ Google's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Google SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Tax Network USA: Full-service tax firm. Go to https://tnusa.com/lex BetterHelp: Online therapy and counseling. Go to https://betterhelp.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drink. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (00:07) - Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections (07:55) - Growing up in India (14:04) - Advice for young people (15:46) - Styles of leadership (20:07) - Impact of AI in human history (32:17) - Veo 3 and future of video (40:01) - Scaling laws (43:46) - AGI and ASI (50:11) - P(doom) (57:02) - Toughest leadership decisions (1:08:09) - AI mode vs Google Search (1:21:00) - Google Chrome (1:36:30) - Programming (1:43:14) - Android (1:48:27) - Questions for AGI (1:53:42) - Future of humanity (1:57:04) - Demo: Google Beam (2:04:46) - Demo: Google XR Glasses (2:07:31) - Biggest invention in human history PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips
Chapter 1: What was Sundar Pichai's childhood like in India?
And there, I talked to a lot of brilliant people, and one of them was a grad student studying the so-called dark triad. These are the three personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. A little bit for a brief moment, it made me wish I took that path of studying the human mind. And perhaps that is the indirect way.
Through all the AI, through all the programming, through all the building of systems, and now with the podcast, Maybe I somehow sneaked up to that dream in the end. Anyway, I say all that because these topics are studying the extremes of the human mind. But of course, the extremes are just the edges of an incredibly complicated system that's just so fascinating to study.
to reflect on, to put a mirror to, all those processes that you do through talk therapy. They're just fascinating. Anyway, you can check them out at betterhelp.com and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com. This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix.
I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole, but there's a lot of interesting studies that measure the decreased performance of the human brain. So cognitive processing speed, for example. By what amount does it decrease? Reaction time. By what amount does it decrease when you decrease the brain's sodium levels, for example?
Sodium and potassium really are important on a chemical level for the functioning of the human brain. Now, obviously, all throughout human history, people understood the value of water, but as a medical concept, the concept of dehydration only came about in the 19th century. If we just look at the history of medicine, it's kind of hilarious how little we knew before.
And it makes me think we know very little now relative to what we will know in a hundred and a thousand years. The human body, the biological system of the human body is incredibly complicated. So for us to have the certainty that we sometimes exude about the human body, about what we understand about disease, about health, it's kind of funny. Anyway, get a sample pack for free with any purchase.
Try it at drinkelement.com. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great-looking online store. Once again, I do this often, where I don't just or at all talk about Shopify, but instead talk about the CEO of Shopify, Toby.
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Chapter 2: What advice does Sundar have for young people?
He once again, like I mentioned, with Joshe Bach and the newly launched CIMC, California Institute of Machine Consciousness, He's a big supporter of that too. And a bunch of people have asked me why I have not done a podcast with him yet. I don't know either. I'm sure it's going to happen soon. And I haven't seen him in quite a while.
A lot of people from a lot of walks of life deeply respect him for his intellect, for the way he does business, and just for the human being he is. Anyway, not sure why I mentioned that here, but back to what this is supposed to be. You can sell shirts online like I did, lxrema.com slash shop. It's super easy to set up a store. I did in a few minutes. What else can I say? You should do it too.
Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash lex. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. I was training jiu-jitsu the other day in that wonderful Texas heat.
And I was reminded, first of all, how long my journey with jiu-jitsu has been and how fulfilling it has been. How interesting the exploration of the puzzle of two humans trying to break each other's arms and legs is. plus the wrestling and the grappling component. Really interesting. Leverage, power, speed, how all that could be neutralized.
How to control a human body with leverage, with technique, as opposed to raw, generally, misapplied strength, I should say. Anyway, because there are times where there's long stretches of weeks where I don't train. You feel it in the cardio. You do a bunch of rounds and you just... The breaths are shallow. You feel like the mind is hazy from exhaustion.
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Chapter 3: How does AI impact human history?
That you're a little bit more risk-averse because you don't want to end up in a bad position and have to battle out of that bad position after many rounds of exhausting battles. And after that training session when I got home, I enjoyed a nice cold AG1. They'll give you a one-month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. And now, dear friends, here's Sundar Pichai. Your life story is inspiring to a lot of people. It's inspiring to me. You grew up in India, whole family living in a humble two-room apartment. Very little, almost no access to technology.
And from those humble beginnings, you rose to lead a $2 trillion business. technology company. So if you could travel back in time and told that, let's say, 12-year-old Sundar, that you're now leading one of the largest companies in human history, what do you think that young kid would say?
I would have probably laughed it off. You know, probably too far-fetched to imagine or believe at that time. You would have to explain the internet first. For sure. I mean, computers to me at that time, you know, I was 12 in 1984. So probably, you know, by then I had started reading about them. I hadn't seen one. What was that place like? Take me to your childhood. I grew up in Chennai.
It's in south of India. It's a beautiful, bustling city. Lots of people, lots of energy. You know, simple life. Definitely like fond memories of playing cricket outside the home. We just used to play on the streets. All the neighborhood kids would come out and we would play until it got dark and we couldn't play anymore. Barefoot. Traffic would come. We would just stop the game.
Everything would drive through and you would just continue playing, right, just to kind of get the visual in your head. You know, pre-computers, there's a lot of free time. Now that I think about it, now you have to go and seek that quiet solitude or something. Newspapers, books is how I gained access to the world's information at the time, you will. My grandfather was a big influence.
He worked in the post office. He was so good with language. His English, you know, his handwriting till today is the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen. He would write so clearly. He was so articulate. And so he kind of got me introduced into books. He loved politics. So we could talk about anything. And, you know, that was there in my family throughout.
So lots of books, trashy books, good books, everything from Ayn Rand to books on philosophy to stupid crime novels. So books was a big part of my life. But that kind of, this whole, it's not surprising I ended up at Google because Google's mission kind of always resonated deeply with me. This access to knowledge, I was hungry for it. but definitely have fond memories of my childhood.
Access to knowledge was there, so that's the wealth we had. You know, every aspect of technology, I had to wait for a while. I've obviously spoken before about how long it took for us to get a phone, about five years, but it's not the only thing. A telephone. There was a five-year waiting list, and we got a rotary telephone.
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Chapter 4: What are Sundar's thoughts on leadership?
Chapter 5: What is the future of AI and AGI?
where you're working with people who you feel are kind of like stretching your abilities is what helps you grow, I think. So putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, And I think often you'll surprise yourself. So I think being open-minded enough to kind of put yourself in those positions is maybe another thing I would say.
Well, lessons can we learn maybe from an outsider perspective. For me, looking at your story and gotten to know you a bit, you're humble, you're kind. Usually when I think of somebody who has had a journey like yours and climbs to the very top of leadership, they're in a cutthroat world. they're usually going to be a bit of an asshole.
So what wisdom are we supposed to draw from the fact that your general approach is of balance, of humility, of kindness, listening to everybody? What's your secret?
I do get angry. I do get frustrated. I have the same emotions all of us do, right, in the context of work and everything. But a few things, right, I think, you know, I... Over time, I figured out the best way to get the most out of people. You know, you kind of find mission-oriented people who are on the shad journey, who have this inner drive to excellence, to do the best.
And, you know, you kind of motivate people and you can achieve a lot that way, right? And so it often tends to work out that way. But have there been times like, you know, I lose it? Yeah, but, you know, maybe less often than others. And maybe over the years... Less and less so because I find it's not needed to achieve what you need to do.
So losing your shit has not been productive.
Yeah, less often than not. I think people respond to that. They may do stuff to react to that, like what you actually want them to do the right thing. And so maybe there's a bit of like sports, I'm a sports fan in football coaches in soccer, that football, You know, people often talk about like man management, right? Great coaches too, right? I think there is an element of that in our lives.
How do you get the best out of the people you work with? You know, at times you're working with people who are so committed to achieving. If they've done something wrong, they feel it more than you do, right? So you treat them differently than, you know, occasionally there are people who you need to clearly let them know, like that wasn't okay or whatever it is.
But I've often found that not to be the case.
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Chapter 6: How does Google Search integrate AI?
But, you know, many of what you're talking about were kind of this general things which pretty much affected everything, you know, electricity or internet, etc. But I don't think we've ever dealt with the technology, both which is progressing so fast, becoming so capable. It's not clear what the ceiling is. And the main unique, it's recursively self-improving, right? It's capable of that.
And so the fact it is going, it's the first technology will kind of dramatically accelerate creation itself, like creating things, building new things, can improve and achieve things on its own, right? I think like puts it in a different league, right? And so, a different league. And so I think the impact it'll end up having will far surpass everything we've seen before.
obviously with that comes a lot of important things to think and wrestle with, but I definitely think that'll end up being the case.
Especially if it gets to the point of where we can achieve superhuman performance on the AI research itself. So it's a technology that may, it's an open question, but it may be able to achieve a level to where the technology itself can create itself better than it could yesterday.
It's like the move 37 of...
alpha research or whatever it is right like you know and when when yeah you're right when when it can do novel self-directed research obviously for a long time we will have hopefully always humans in the loop and all that stuff and these are complex questions to talk about but yes i think the underlying technology you know i've said this like if you watched seeing alpha go start from scratch
be clueless and like become better through the course of a day, you know, like, you know, kind of like, kind of like, you know, really it hits you when you see that happen. Even our, like the VO3 models, if you sample the models when they were like 30% done and 60% done and looked at what they were generating and you kind of see how it all comes together.
It's kind of like, I would say, kind of inspiring, a little bit unsettling, right, as a human. So all of that is true, I think.
Well, the interesting thing of the Industrial Revolution, electricity, like you mentioned, you can go back to, again, the first agricultural revolution. There's what's called the Neolithic package of the first agricultural revolution. It wasn't just... that the nomads settled down and started planting food.
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Chapter 7: What are Sundar's views on creativity and technology?
Chapter 8: What does Sundar think about the risks of AI?
Yeah, less often than not. I think people respond to that. They may do stuff to react to that, like what you actually want them to do the right thing. And so maybe there's a bit of like sports, I'm a sports fan in football coaches in soccer, that football, You know, people often talk about like man management, right? Great coaches too, right? I think there is an element of that in our lives.
How do you get the best out of the people you work with? You know, at times you're working with people who are so committed to achieving. If they've done something wrong, they feel it more than you do, right? So you treat them differently than, you know, occasionally there are people who you need to clearly let them know, like that wasn't okay or whatever it is.
But I've often found that not to be the case.
And sometimes the right words at the right time, spoken firmly, can reverberate through time.
Also, sometimes the unspoken words, you know, people can sometimes see that, like, you know, you're unhappy without you saying it. And so sometimes the silence can deliver that message even more.
Sometimes less is more. Who's the greatest soccer player of all time? Messi or Ronaldo or Pelé or Maradona? I'm going to make, you know, in this question.
Is this going to be a political answer? I will tell the truthful answer. So it's Messi. It is. You know, it's been interesting because my son is a big Cristiano Ronaldo fan. And so we've had to watch El Clasicos together, you know, with that dynamic in there. I so admire CR7s. I mean, I've never seen an athlete more committed to that kind of excellence. And so he's one of the all-time greats.
But, you know, for me, Messi is it.
Yeah, when I see Lionel Messi, you just are in awe that humans are able to achieve that level of greatness and genius and artistry. When we talk, we'll talk about AI, maybe robotics and this kind of stuff. That level of genius, I'm not sure you can possibly match by AI in a long time. It's just an example of greatness.
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