Google's Porat on the US-China AI Race, Big Tech, Trump in Office #technology
So, folks, one of the reasons, Bruce. That all of these people are here in person and many more are watching live virtually is because they're dying to know what you think things are going to be like for big tech and how things are going to play out for Google now that President Trump is back in the White House. So probably makes the most sense to start right there. Tell me what you think.
So, look, I think the president and his team have been clear that they see technology as an asset for the country. They see the economic upside that comes with executing the right way. They want to clear away some of the impediments to investing. Things like permitting delays, etc., which is going to be an important part of providing the infrastructure backbone to power growth. And so I think that there's a tremendous
amount of opportunity to continue working with them as we did in Trump one. These things are easy to say, hard to do. Do you feel optimistic about their chances for success when you say they're just expanding? But I think the opportunity with AI is profound. Oh, no, no, no. I meant the things that that that
President Trump and his team have been saying over the past several weeks about about what they want to do in order to supercharge the US economy and open up opportunities for American technology. I say those things are easy to say, developing smart policy and furthermore executing smart policy oftentimes, right? Not so easy. And I'm curious to know, you know, about your level of optimism, hopefulness, if you will, for what can be accomplished. You referred to it as Trump 1.0. What can be accomplished under Trump? 2.0?
So I think generally I'm a tech optimist, So I'm an optimist. I think, you know, you know, this probably the most profound time in my career was in the Bush administration when Secretary Hank Paulson brought me to work with Treasury and then the Treasury and Fed during the financial crisis. And I think for all of us in the private sector, it's absolutely imperative to engage because to your point, the devil's in the details in landing things the right way so that you don't have unintended consequences. There's quite a bit that needs to be done. I think importantly, when we look at the
the the implications in the upside from investing in AI, this is something that the U.S. and the West needs to continue to execute against and execute well because the implications are so great. It's not just economic upside, it's advancing science. It's what we can do with education and health, and it becomes a national security opportunity and imperative. And I think when you have economic strength, you have national security strength, and you work with your allies, Well, it continues to broaden out the kind of the threats within which we're operating, and they've articulated that. So, again, nothing is easy. You're right. But I think it requires each of us to
constructively engage, as I expect they will, as we most certainly want to, to make sure things get landed and in the most productive way helps to explain, I suppose, why Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, of course, and Sundar, your CEO, spent some time with President Trump in the weeks following the inauguration, as did many other leading figures in the tech industry. Ruth, you made mention of your advisory work for the US government back around the financial crisis. I'm glad you did actually, because it helps to establish an important context. Those of you here recognized Ruth in her current role and maybe her immediate president role. She's now the President and chief investment officer at Google and Alphabet.
And before that, she was the chief financial officer since 2015. But before that, she had a whole other career on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley, where in the 1990 she had a tech banking. She ended up running financial institutions, banking.
And then, as you mentioned, you helped to advise the US government on AIG, Fannie and Freddie, and you were the CFO at Morgan Stanley as well. And I mention this because I'm going to come back to a little later in our conversation. In the meantime, help me on on a personal level, what do you hope for most out of this kind of political, at the very least, political reset that America has experienced with this election? You know, I look at it really at this point through the lens that we're all privileged to live in a time where I can be applied not just to economic upside, but when you look, for example, at what we're able to do to address some of the really big social imperatives around health care delivery, around education. You know, notably my colleague Dennis Hassabis, when he won the Nobel Prize, was awarded the Nobel Prize last fall for Alpha Fold, described as the single greatest contribution to drug discovery. With our colleague John Jumper as well. But he was asked in this in his Nobel
speech, and he said what really motivated him and what motivates him is solving the most intractable problems. And when you think about the application of AI to health as an example, early detection saves lives. At Google, we have pioneered early detection of metastatic cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer. We're doing it with diabetic
retinopathy. These are really exciting. So when you say how is this administration going to open new opportunities? What are we going to land? There's a whole swath. If you want again, go back to the opening comment. They have said tech is an asset. We want economic growth. We want to cut through inefficiency. These are opportunities. And on the inefficiency point, it's one I get pretty excited about. As you probably would imagine, there's
tremendous inefficiency across public and private sector. One of the questions you don't see most Yahoo! Go figure except to Bloomberg. One of the questions I'm most often asked by finance ministers is they say I'm not going to get more budget. How do I make my budget work better for my constituents? How do I unlock it? And there are so many examples with tech, which of course, is what the Trump administration wants to do as part of Dogefather just give you one that I really like.
We did this in the stadium and so done a number of places. They said we need to be able to deliver better for our constituents payments and other responses. So implemented our AI based customer support. And they initially said we have four critical languages in Minnesota. Can you help us do it in four languages?
Google Translate. We have 260 languages. Four language was no problem. Six months later, they wanted to add another 26 languages. And I just you know, when I'm meeting with heads of state from around the globe, they have a similar set of questions. And it's fascinating where they'll say, I can't actually deliver education to kids without Google Translate. So the ability to deliver services is all part of what I think we're going to be able to see across what the Trump administration intends to do, but more broadly. You mentioned doge.
No one appears to wield more influence at the moment over President Trump than Elon Musk. And I'm curious, I know other people are curious because I've talked to them about this Is having Elon so close to the president on balance, a positive or a negative for the tech industry? For the tech industry you're not seeing for the country. An interesting question. Well, I'm but that might be where I'm going next. Okay.
I think about it in the context of the country. Look, the reality for the planet, for the for the universe, for Mars. So, look, he is an extraordinary innovator and entrepreneur.
If you like him, I think we all know that we're at Google, very involved with quite a number of the businesses that he's incubated and built. Space X is a great example and what an extraordinary accomplishment that is. Anybody who is not you, StarLink, has to try StarLink. And so to have somebody at this time where you're trying to unlock the potential for it is not a foregone conclusion that each one of us, public and private sector, will radically rethink what we're doing in a way that gets the trillions of dollars of GDP upside. That is work to do. So to have somebody who is such an
entrepreneur and broad thinker will be an unlock and to understand that technology is a critical part of both productivity and social service solutions has to be an asset. He can be a mercurial guy and he's a little unpredictable at times. Some describe them as a little unfiltered that can all be considered positive or negative. But but beyond what he might help to unlock in the way of opportunity for tech. To your point, for the country and and perhaps more broadly for the world is the.
Are the ideas that Elon is bringing to not just President Trump himself, but those around him in government healthy. You're talking about a broad set. I sure am. I know I'm going to say in my way, I tell people all the time, stay in your lane and I'm going to stick in the tech lane. So there are solutions that should be implemented. Each one of us needs to implement it, and I will leave it to others more broadly. How about for Google?
You mentioned that Google and Alphabet work collaboratively with some of Elon's companies. He's also a competitive yours competitor excuse me, of yours in a couple of other areas. He occupies a unique position right now with influence over government policy that affects the companies that the industry's excuse me that he's in and that you're in. Is that a risk? Well, let me take you to one of my favorite examples of something important that we're working on, and that is Waymo, self-driving cars. Right. And he's clearly focused for Tesla on
self-driving. More than a million people die on the road every year through human error. We're not going to save every life with self-driving cars, but we're already seeing data that shows already today a meaningful delta in safety errors. Issues with Waymo. And in order to actually have an accelerated rollout that makes sense, we always leave with Waymo. It's got to be safety first.
But you can still accelerate. We need we should have in the US a comprehensive approach to self-driving and what are the standards around it. So there are some areas where actually having a a another voice at the table around what is proper regulation. We think that there you need to have transparency around all issues of engagement, safety risks, etc.
there proper high bars that actually make it really clear that we're delivering not only a great rider experience, anyone who goes to San Francisco has to try. This is one of the top tourist attractions. But it's that's a positive. Like Waymo, the momentum in Waymo is pretty extraordinary. We have with Waymo self-driven 5 million miles, 4 million of which were in the last year alone. So it gives you a sense of kind of where
this is a hockey stick curve. It gives you a hockey stick curve where we're leading with with safety. But there are opportunities when you actually have competition to have try and establish what is a proper governance protocol around it. Would you feel comfortable if if TikTok were sold to X? Oh my gosh, when are we going to talk about our business? I'm about to.
You heard him move on. So the president in an interview that he did with No, no, no, we're going we're going there. We're going to I promise you, we are going straight to Google. I promise. So the president now president, of course, Trump in an interview with my editor in chief, John Micklethwait back in October, suggested that unlike the Biden administration, he might not want to break Google up because he sees it as a bulwark against Chinese technology. His direct quote, China is afraid of Google. How much would she should we read into that? And what does that suggest about the prospects for Google now that we are in a different era? You know, we clearly are of the view that the DOJ's proposed remedies make no sense, that we're delivering a product solution that customers want that delivers tremendous value. And it wasn't lost on many people that
actually the same time that was coming out. The Nobel Committee thought it was wise to give Dennis and John Jumper a Nobel Prize for this extraordinary breakthrough with Alpha Fold. I've already commented on it briefly, but predicting protein structure for all proteins known to mankind 200 million proteins. When Dennis embarked on that, another one always quoting Nobel Prize winner as a colleague, it's like a great place to be.
But he was one of these colleagues or group of scientists said, how can it be? How can you possibly do this? And his answer was, why not? And as a result of saying, why not? We now have open source to the world, something that is being credited with the single greatest contribution to drug discovery. And why not is become the phrase that I use for each one of us like. Why not radically rethink what is possible with education? Why not radically rethink? How do you get early diagnosis to everyone around the planet? Why don't you rather why not think about the thought of the people who are still not connected? So are know, are we able work? I think that this is a critical time. Inflection points are not as evident in the moment as they are later. And as a country, we should embrace it as the company we most certainly are. We're investing aggressively. And I think it's important that we continue to do so.
So that's that's why we're approaching it. I thank you. One person. I'm sorry. I, to your point, has such tremendous potential to transform companies, not just certainly has the potential to transform economies. It has the potential to transform the way we live, but it has the potential to transform companies. Right. Including yours.
So share with us a sense of how AI is at this very moment transforming Google. What are you using it for? How is it making the company more streamlined, more efficient, allowing it to perhaps redeploy resources into other areas? So I think that one of the fascinating elements about where we are on this AI curve is economists have pretty broad range of estimates about the economic upside in the trillions. In the US alone, it's up to 25 trillion by 2030. Globally, the numbers are pretty staggering. And what they mean is that you do need to radically rethink your business.
We are all anyone who is currently playing with Gemini or any one of the other ones out there. We're at the early stages of the application of it, so Centres talked about this. We're leveraging Gemini and the opportunity basically as support for software engineers and bring them up to do, you know, additional higher value add work. It is. We are still on that journey in finance. There are opportunities with how we analyse every element, the data, think about it, there are large datasets.
What are we doing on working capital? What are we doing on closing the books? What are we doing on forecasting our tax, people looking at it to digest information. So it is. But those the reason I started with the trillions is the key question continues to be so what are those radical rethink opportunities? That's a curve that we like. Everyone continue to go down. And I think that what we're most excited about is when we see across the board thinking about, okay, I'm logistics company, how do I actually get to optimise routes, save on fuel as a result, get things done faster. It's like each want any process any of us has.
We can step back and look at how we can fundamentally change what we're doing. You just need to start really on the journey. You need to get the puck on the ice because the more you use it, the more more you benefit from it. See the doors that open. Ruth knows that as a Canadian, I really love the hockey metaphors. I love the hockey metaphor. And I will say one other thing. There was some very concerning data that women actually are not getting the puck on the ice at the same rate as men. This research just came out at UC
Berkeley, and I would say this is a moment in history. Every moment of change is one where individually you can have breakaway moments. And so we have we do believe in everything that we do, the power of what we're bringing. I look at it as a triangle is the products and services are an unlock.
You don't get the unlock if we don't invest in infrastructure and if you don't have a talent pool that is able and knows how to leverage what that what the new skills are that are required. So we created something called an opportunity Fund, where we're providing a digital skilling as want to do a shout out to women, don't let that gap persist because the rate of change is too fast. Since you brought it up. President Trump, many people around him, including Elon, have declared war on what Elon calls the woke mind virus. And as a result of that, we're seeing very broadly in corporate America a. Pull back from diversity, equity and
inclusion initiatives. Do you worry, Ruth, about the impact that's going to have on, you know, the opportunities for women in the workforce? Look at Google, we want to and have always wanted to attract the best talent out there. And the best talent comes from all places. We want people to have the opportunity to deliver the best quality work they can. And that's what we remain focused on. You're absolutely right. Between the Supreme Court opinion and
some other, you know, there are pronouncements that are coming out, but it should continue to be about attracting the best talent and creating opportunities. Very specifically on the subject of AI as it concerns Google. Does it herald the end of the search area? You know what we've seen? I'm glad you asked the question because it's we obviously love search. You know, when you think about Google, Google started with ten blue links.
And there have been times throughout Google's life, in fact, when I joined Google in 2015, one of the questions was where to from here? Can Google and search make this transition from desktop to mobile? It's gone from ten blue links. Text Search Voice Search lens. How many of you have used lenses on your phone where you just it's an extra absolutely extraordinary. I don't know how to live without it the never take your camera pointed at whatever you want and it's a way to search. You can find product inventory, you can learn about foliage, whatever, whatever. You know, as people here are dying to
learn about foliage wipers, he's identified what a bird was. So the but it's an extraordinary, you know, 20 billion uses a month. It's absolutely extraordinary additional form of search. What we've talked about is the world has gone from these ten blue links text, visual multimodal. It will continue to evolve. And what we're seeing with air overviews, which I view as sort of a cockpit to take you through search, where it actually will be leveraging a I give you a summary. In many respects it's a shortcut and then you know where to double click to go in.
And so we're trying to make it easier and help users evolve. What it enables you to do is really ask questions in different ways in the context boxes bigger so you can actually explore. And it's the kind of evolution you have when you go from text to voice. It's a different way of search. But in particular, we're seeing with younger people that they are continuing to engage.
So five years from now, how will I be searching, so to speak, on Google or on some kind of a Google interface? And more importantly, from the standpoint of the company, how will you take you mentioned that you love search. How do you take the phenomenal revenue that search generates and generate that in something, you know, different AI driven presumably? So there are two parts to the question. One is we're very focused, as others are, on what is called a genetic how do you use a AI to actually help you accomplish the task that you want to accomplish, become a more of a personal assistant to you? And so what's fascinating is where where does AI enable us to go to be ever more useful? And if you think about Google's mission to organize the world's information, make it universally accessible and useful, that mission is as true today with a different backbone of technology that's enabling you to be even more efficient, useful, accessible, How to monetize. We and everyone else continues to focus on what is monetization. There's been an expression of Google since day one. You know, first you drive the user
experience, monetization will follow. Clearly this is an expensive area with the investments and compute. So we're very focused on how to ensure we're driving a return on invested capital over the long term. But the most important thing is to get the experiences right because you don't have a product if you don't get the experiences right, which is where we're continuing to drive and I think really lead with the work that Demos and Google DeepMind are doing. I've been paying very close attention to
the race. You alluded to this earlier, the race between the United States of the West, if you prefer, and China to dominate in AI. Who's winning? Well, that's a great question because I think to date the US is ahead in models.
We're probably a year plus ahead in models. The West is ahead in ships. I think China is on par and may even be a bit ahead on what's called diffusion of basic capabilities. I mentioned that this unlock of the economic upside requires what's called diffusion across industries, the application across public sector, private sector, in a way where you do radically rethink what you're doing. Don't just use Gemini or the others to help you write a memo like Rethink Processes. Call centers are a great example. It's such an obvious place where you can deliver better service, lower cost, so anecdotally on par, but they may be a bit ahead.
The important thing is it can't be taken for granted that the US or the West stays in the lead. And when we look at it, there are a couple of really critical elements that must be put in place. It really goes back to your first question how to engage with the Trump administration. You need the right regulatory framework. It needs to be bold and responsible. I'll come back to what we need.
So the right regulatory framework, you need the right investment framework to make sure you crowd in private sector capital and you have the right public private sector collaboration. And you also need, I think, importantly to think not just within your boundary, but what partners globally, what other countries are in this broader ecosystem. Because that's the one thing I hear with every head of state with whom I meet is we want to be part of the digital transformation.
We'd rather do it with the US. But in the absence of the US being present, we will do it. And so I think level of engagement, things like what the air diffusion rule that came out last week, how to make sure you can actually deliver for countries outside the US is critically important and on regulation. Simple mnemonic device for you Fab,
which is not like a semiconductor fab. You need to make be focused like regulation shouldn't be one size fits all. The risk associated with email autocomplete is not the same as in health care. And so make sure that if you're imposing regulation, it doesn't become the quagmire that slows down what we're doing in the West. It needs to be focused by sector. If we already have regulation, for example, with health care devices, you don't need a separate regulation because it's an AI health care device, leverage what's already existing there. It needs to be aligned across geographies. Like if you have a patchwork quilt that
is going to impede investments, I'm not going to want to invest if I've got to have a separate set of rules and limitations, they go to the bottom of the list and then balanced have its whole as a risk manager in my prior life, you know, sometimes the risk of saying no is substantially greater. The risk is saying, yes, we are. We're going to not save lives if we say no on health care, the health care opportunity with AI or the Waymo opportunity where they are. And so those are the ways we can stay in the lead. It is not a foregone conclusion.
Simple acronyms I like. Oh, right. It's totally fab. Do you think, Ruth, geopolitically speaking. Do you think of artificial general intelligence, quantum computing, and perhaps fusion power as winner take all technologies? I thought you were going to go somewhere else. I view them as
first, a number of years off and second, extremely exciting what we might be able to do. And you know, on Quantum, we announced a breakthrough last month, last month I think it was with with Willow in a computer chip. Computer chip that enables you to achieve a computation in less than 5 minutes that would have taken ten septillion years on the greatest supercomputer that's around, which is 24 zeros, because I had to Google it to find out how many zeros were on that. The application to biology, other sciences, longer term is pretty extraordinary. I'll give us insight that we didn't need, that we haven't had or computation speed.
So there are opportunities. You can't slow the pace, you can't put a halt in technology, never have been able to. And I think the question is the appropriate application of it. Okay. How long since you brought it up? Well, I mentioned Quantum. You talked about Willow. How long until quantum computing leaves the lab and enters the real world? You know, it's going to surprise me, but I ask Hartmut, who leads the Quantum Lab that all the time. And what does it tell you?
Look, they're continuing to make advances along the way. It's still probably a couple of years out before you see specific application, but we're already seeing things now that are very exciting. And how long do you figure until Google is able to make a business out of it? That's. Yeah. It's that kind of thing. You look in each one of these things,
there are certain things that are on the on the whiteboard that are pretty exciting. And I think. Well. Well, we'll save it for another conversation. Okay. Watch this space, I suppose. Yes.
I mentioned that I was going to return to your previous career. In this context. Hopefully I'm not. Well, you could talk to us about your next career, but we'll get to that at the end of the conversation. Tech is full of debates about risk.
I had the so-called unintended consequences of doing X, Y, or Z. As someone schooled in financial risk management, how do you think about risk management in tech? Is it the same thing? Is it different? Do you apply learnings from one to the other? Tell us. You know, just this morning, I was at a meeting with a head of state and talking about the financial crisis, which actually what surprised me that we would be talking about it. But I think one of the most important lessons on risk management from the financial crisis is that every one of us should identify our greatest source of vulnerability and protect against it early, because you can always protect it. In my experience, you can protect against something like during the financial crisis, the greatest source of vulnerable vulnerability was liquidity.
That is what choked off your operations. You couldn't get it in the moment. You could get it in months prior. And so when I got there, when you don't need it, not there, when you need it inexpensive, when you don't need it, impossible when you do need it, fortify early. And so when I got to Google and people ask me lessons from the financial crisis, risk management lessons, and I share that one, the obvious question is what is it for Google? And a lot of it is really about ensuring that we have the infrastructure capacity.
It's innovation, obviously, and infrastructure resilience to be able to deliver in all environments because that's what people can us to do. And you can't have a data center like that. This has been a 25 year build to have capacity. So step one is how are how are you operating beyond that risk management? I think another lesson from the crisis, why did AIG blow itself up? They didn't understand the magnitude of risks they had in their derivatives up in the UK. And so one of the most important lessons for all of us, you need to have data that in a pithy way gives you a cockpit to run your business. It's the data analytics that enable you to make the right decisions. And a decision framework is critically
important. And so for each of us, I mean, that is one of the areas we spent a lot of time internally. It's one of the things we do with our partners. In 2023, you took on this role of President and CEO. In addition at the time to being CFO, which you're not any longer, and that might be for your sake, a very good thing.
I'm sure you've missed those quarterly earnings calls. Why did you choose to stay at Google in this role as opposed to perhaps and I suspect you thought about it, people have made they even have talked about you, about it, you know, going off or running a company and being the CEO somewhere. What is it? What is what what is it about this role that that was so appealing to you? I think there are few times in the history of the planet where we have had a technology change as exciting as A.I., And I've talked about the upside with A.I., which is not just the economic upside, but the breakthroughs in science. All of the why not questions? Why not radically rethink education, health care, every element of it? It's a privilege to be in this position. And the role has two parts which, again,
hard to envision. We reach billions of people around the globe and the solutions that we're able to provide are pretty mindblowing. And so when I think about, you know, one key part of it is working around the globe with those who are saying, how do I walk the capacity of the potential with A.I.? How is it I get access to these products and services and it comes back to the triangle I talked about, Well, where do we engage with deep technical infrastructure, subsea cables? Where do we actually engage with workforce development, education, and how do we alphabet deliver a return for shareholders on that so that we can continue to reinforce? There are few times in history like this it's pretty cool. And the stories from around the globe of
like, how do I unlock? How do I deal with maternal health care in Africa where people at women are still dying when they shouldn't? We have solutions where you can go in the field and it makes a difference working with partners. And then it's the whole other bits portfolio. I guess being able to work with the way most of the world are. We have a number of others Wing, which
is a drone company intrinsic, which is an operating system for robotics, ICE, morphic leveraging Alpha for hard to see something that has more approximates. Yeah. So this is your first full year not having to worry about those quarterly earnings and not having to do those analyst calls. No worry, because we all need to worry as holders. We need to be I'm sure there's some things you can't quite let go of, but 12 months from now, what does success look like continuing to extend the impact that we have globally, working with partners, delivering these things I've been talking about that drives a return for alphabet and ongoing sharpening the focus within other bets, as we've talked about and being back with you, obviously.
2025-01-26 09:09
