chief executive Sundar Pichai expects artificial intelligence to play a critical role in the tech giant’s future leadership during the Bloomberg Tech Conference earlier this week.On the question of whether a human or AI will run Google in future, Pichai stated, “I do think whoever is running it will have an extraordinary AI companion.”

“The products we built tremendously impact society. The journey of technologies, doing the hard work to make sure you're harnessing it in a way that benefits people. I think that'll be an important quality to have,” the Google CEO said.

Before Pichai took the stage, Meta Platforms Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andrew Bosworth said there has been a cultural shift in Silicon Valley, where it is now more palatable for the tech industry to develop resources for the US military.

The company announced a partnership with defence contractor Anduril Industries Inc. last week to develop products for the US military, including an artificial intelligence-powered helmet with virtual and augmented reality features.

Pichai said Google’s parent Alphabet will keep hiring engineers at least into 2026, emphasising that human talent remains key even as the company ramps up AI investments.

“I expect we will grow from our current engineering base even into next year, because it allows us to do more with the opportunity space,” Pichai said. “I just view this as making engineers dramatically more productive, getting a lot of the mundane aspects out of what they do.”Tech majors, like Microsoft, have fired more staff this year, reflecting in part the enormous investments needed to ensure leadership in AI. The firings have stoked fears about the technology replacing certain job functions. Google itself has conducted rounds of layoffs in recent years to free up resources.

Pichai pointed out that while AI excels in areas like coding, the models continue to make basic mistakes, requiring human intervention.