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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai says AI won't lead to job cuts, will be "an accelerator"

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Alphabet won't be cutting jobs due to AI, CEO says

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google Inc., speaks during the company's Cloud Next '18 event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, July 24, 2018
(Image credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
  • Alphabet CEO says AI won't lead to job cuts
  • Sundar Pichai believes Alphabet could even hire more workers
  • Many major tech firms have announced job cuts in recent years

The CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet has hit back at fears growing AI adoption will lead to job cuts.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Sundar Pichai said AI could actually help Alphabet grow its workforce, rather than lead to redundancies and losses.

“I expect we will grow from our current engineering phase even into next year, because it allows us to do more,” Pichai said, noting AI could be "an accelerator" driving new product development, which in turn needs more human workers.

AI job concerns

Alphabet has made several large-scale layoffs in recent years, with 12,000 workers cut in January 2023, and around a thousand let go over the course of 2024, with Google also announcing several hundred more cuts in 2025.

However, many of the largest technology firms in the world have also been forced to make similar cuts, such as Microsoft, which recently announced 7,000 roles would go.

Pichai was hopeful about the impact AI will have on Alphabet's workers, noting the technology could free them from repetitive or dull admin work to tackle more creative tasks.

He did acknowledge concerns about AI taking human jobs, and addressed recent comments by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggesting AI could remove half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years by saying, “I respect that … I think it’s important to voice those concerns and debate them.”

"There’s a lot of forward progress ahead with the paths we are on, not only the set of ideas we are working on today, [but] some of the newer ideas we are experimenting with,” Pichai added.

“I’m very optimistic on seeing a lot of progress - but you’ve always had these technology curves where you may hit a temporary plateau. So are we currently on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t think anyone can say for sure.”

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Mike Moore
Mike Moore
Deputy Editor, TechRadar Pro

Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.

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