‘AI is where my scientific interest is': Google's Sergey Brin on why he came out of retirement
Brin said that he comes into Google 'pretty much every day now' in order to provide support for training the tech giant's latest Gemini models because it is something that naturally interests him.
The former Alphabet president made these remarks at Google's flagship I/O developer conference last week. Brin made a surprise appearance during a talk that was originally slated to feature only Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind.
'I torture people like Demis, who is pretty amazing. He tolerated me crashing this fireside,' Brin joked.
'I tend to be pretty deep in the technical details. And that's a luxury I really enjoy, fortunately, because guys like Demis are minding the shop. And that's just where my scientific interest is,' the prominent Silicon Valley figure was quoted as saying by Business Insider.
Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page stepped down from their official roles at Google parent Alphabet in 2019 and went into retirement. Brin rejoined Google in 2023 to help the tech giant keep pace with rising rivals like OpenAI and Perplexity in the high-stakes AI race.
Brin also expressed confidence about Google's latest bet on wearables which comes a decade after the company pulled the plug on Google Glass. 'I just didn't know anything about consumer electronic supply chains, really, and how hard it would be to build that and have it at a reasonable price point,' he said.
AI is far more capable now for such a product, he added.
Google is working on Extended Reality or XR, an operating system for wearables such as smart glasses or headsets that will be built by partners like Samsung. At I/O 2025, the tech giant demoed a prototype of an XR-powered smart glasses that comes with several Gemini AI capabilities.
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