What Google CEO Sundar Pichai said about software engineers losing jobs due to ChatGPT-like tools

He also spoke about fear among software engineers losing jobs to AI tools like ChatGPT. 

“I think there are two things that will also be true for software engineers. One is that some of the menial labour you do as part of programming will improve. So perhaps it will become more enjoyable to code over time, similar to how Google Docs has made it simpler to write. And so if you’re a programmer, over time, having these collaborative IDs with the assistance built in, I think, is going to make it easier,” he stated.

In the podcast interview, Pichai also stressed on the positive aspects of AI chatbots. He said that he believes that tools like Bard and ChatGPT will make programming more accessible. These tools will also enable users to make new objects that will lead to the creation of new roles, he added.

Answering the question about the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, he said that the success did not shock him. “We had been following GPT 2 and GPT 3. We knew the quality of the people there, so that portion came as no surprise,” he stated.

Talking about Bard, he said that Google will expand the AI bot in the coming days. “We clearly have more capable models. Pretty soon, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable Pathways Language Model (PaLM) models, which will bring more capabilities; be it in reasoning, coding, it can answer maths questions better,” he explained. 

Talking about Bard’s limitation, Pichai said “To me, it was important to not put out a more capable model before we can fully make sure we can handle it well.”

In the podcast, he stressed on how the AI revolution is moving too fast and “perhaps poses a threat to society”.