Sundar Pichai claims AI is making Google engineers 10% more productive, says AI agents are happening
Google is seeing real benefits from using artificial intelligence in its engineering teams, according to CEO Sundar Pichai. In a recent podcast with researcher Lex Fridman, Pichai shared that AI tools are helping Google's software engineers become about 10 per cent more productive.The company has built a system to measure how much time engineers save every week thanks to AI. That time is then spent on more important tasks, which helps Google move faster overall. Pichai said the company is carefully tracking this, and the early results show a clear improvement.advertisementHe also mentioned that the future of AI goes beyond just suggestions and code assistance. Google is looking forward to using "AI agents" tools that can take actions on their own, make decisions, and manage simple tasks without constant human input. This, he believes, will lead to the next big breakthrough in how work is done.
Internally, Google already uses an AI tool called 'Goose' to help engineers write code. This tool is trained on decades of technical data from within Google. Thanks to this and other tools, more than 30 per cent of the new code written at Google is now AI-generated, up from 25 per cent just a few months ago.Other tech companies are following a similar path. Microsoft recently said that AI now writes 40 per cent of its code through GitHub Copilot. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg also said AI might handle half of Meta's developer work in the near future.advertisementStill, Pichai believes humans are central to this progress. He said Google plans to hire more engineers next year, and hopes AI will take care of boring and repetitive work, so people can focus on more creative and enjoyable parts of the job. Speaking to Bloomberg during an interview in San Francisco, Pichai clarified that Google sees AI as a tool that complements human talent rather than one that replaces it.According to Pichai, AI is helping engineers at Google become more efficient by taking over time-consuming and repetitive tasks. This increased productivity, he said, is allowing the company to move faster and build more. "I expect we will grow from our current engineering phase even into next year, because it allows us to do more," he said.He described AI as an "accelerator," a way to improve human potential rather than a substitute. At the same time, Pichai acknowledged ongoing concerns about job displacement, particularly following a statement from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who recently warned that AI could replace a large portion of entry-level white-collar roles in the coming years. While he didn't dismiss those concerns, Pichai said it's crucial for the industry to engage in open discussions about the broader impact of AI on employment.
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