Listen: The Future of Google

Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, does not see artificial intelligence as the death of the web. Instead, he views it as the start of a new era. In fact, the number of web pages Google crawls has grown by forty-five percent in just the last two years. While publishers worry about AI-driven search, Pichai says Google's new AI features are actually sending higher-quality traffic to a wider variety of sources.

Beyond search, Google is pushing hard into new hardware. Developer versions of their new augmented reality glasses are launching this year, and Pichai expects to be wearing a pair himself by next year. While these glasses won't replace smartphones overnight, millions of people could be trying them very soon.

Looking further ahead, Pichai believes the most profound aspect of AI is its ability to self-improve. This will change how we interact with the digital world through autonomous agents, and it will eventually lead to the next massive platform shift: robotics. He points to Google's self-driving Waymo cars as specialized robots already in action today.

Through all of this, Pichai insists that Google will not alter search or AI results due to political pressure. For Google, the current AI wave is just the beginning of making research a reality.