Our Field Trip to Google I/O + A Sit-Down With Sundar Pichai + System Update
5/22/202655 min
This week, we headed to Mountain View, Calif., for the annual developer event Google I/O. We share our reactions to Google’s biggest announcements, including a revamped search box, new agentic tools that compete with OpenClaw and an updated flash model of Gemini that the company says is faster than competitors. Then, we ask Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive, how he’s responding to growing evidence that the public is souring on A.I., what advice he’d give to college grads frightened by the current job market and where the company stands relative to competitors in the A.I. race. Finally, we run through the other big tech headlines of the week in our segment System Update.
Guest:
- Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google.
Additional Reading:
- Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years
- How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race
- Elon Musk Loses $150 Billion Suit Against OpenAI and Sam Altman
- Before Mass Layoffs, Meta Reassigns 7,000 Workers to Focus on A.I.
- Pope to Launch Encyclical on AI Alongside Anthropic Co-Founder
- Was a Story That Just Won a Literary Prize A.I.-Generated?
- Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJonathan Swan0:00
I'm Jonathan Swan. I'm a White House reporter for The New York Times. Our job as reporters is to dig out information that powerful people don't want published, to take you into rooms that you would not otherwise have access to. There's no robot that can go and talk to someone who was in the situation room and find out what was really said. In order to get original information that's not public, we actually need journalists to do that. I'm asking you to consider subscribing to The New York Times. Independent journalism is important, and without you, we simply can't do it.
Speaker 20:30
Casey, I couldn't help but notice that during much of the I/O keynote, you were on your phone- Yeah ... uh, playing Balatro and doing emails on your laptop.
Speaker 30:39
Well, you know, when, when you have your agent recording the entire thing and transcribing it for you, you can just, you know, sort of glance up every few seconds and see if a news event is happening. [laughs] It's, it's actually really amazing, the future we're living in.
Speaker 20:47
This is the promise of AGI.
Speaker 30:49
Sure.
Speaker 20:49
Soon we will be able to play Balatro wherever we are.
Speaker 30:52
You can pay attention to nothing and be fine. [laughs] Welcome to the future.
Speaker 20:56
[upbeat music] I'm Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at The New York Times.
Speaker 31:06
I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.
Speaker 21:07
And this is Hard Fork.
Speaker 31:08
This week, it's our annual field trip to Google I/O. We have all the big news, plus our conversation with Google CEO Sundar Pichai. And then some other highlights from the week with our system update. You know, I told that to install last night, but it didn't.
Speaker 21:21
Did you delay it?
Speaker 31:22
Yeah.
Speaker 21:23
You're always doing that.
Unknown speaker1:24
[upbeat music]