Google CEO: Building AI responsibly is the only career that really matters

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The writer is CEO of Google and Alphabet.

This year, generative AI has captured the world’s imagination. Millions of people are already using it to boost creativity and improve productivity. Meanwhile, more and more startups and organizations are bringing AI-powered products and technologies to market faster than ever before.

AI is the deepest technology humanity is working on today; it will touch every industry and aspect of life. Given the high stakes, the more people working to advance the science of AI, the better it will be in terms of expanding opportunities for communities around the world.

While some have tried to reduce this moment to just a competitive AI race, we see it as much more than that. At Google, we’ve spent more than a decade incorporating AI into our products and services and making them available to our users. We care deeply about this. What matters even more, though, is the race to build AI responsibly and make sure that as a society we get it right.

We are approaching this in three ways. First, by boldly seeking innovations to make AI more useful for everyone. We continue to use AI to significantly improve our products, from Google Search and Gmail to Android and Maps. These advances mean that drivers across Europe can now find more fuel-efficient routes; tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are helped to communicate in their new homes; Flood forecasting tools can predict flooding much earlier. Google DeepMind’s work on AlphaFold, in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, resulted in a groundbreaking understanding of more than 200 million cataloged proteins known to science, opening up new possibilities for healthcare.

Our focus is also on enabling others outside of our company to innovate with AI, whether through our APIs and cloud offerings, or with new initiatives such as Google Growth Program for Startups, which supports European entrepreneurs using AI to benefit people’s health and well-being. We are launching an AI Social Innovation Fund to help social enterprises solve some of Europe’s most pressing challenges.

Second, we make sure to develop and deploy technology responsibly, reflecting our deep commitment to earning the trust of our users. That’s why we published the AI ​​Principles in 2018, rooted in the belief that AI should be developed to benefit society and prevent harmful applications.

We have many examples of those principles being put into practice, such as the construction of guardrails to limit misuse of our universal translator. This experimental AI video dubbing service helps experts translate a speaker’s voice and match their lip movements. It has enormous potential to increase understanding of learning, but we know the risks it could present in the hands of bad actors and therefore we have made it accessible only to authorized partners. As AI evolves, so does our approach: This month we announced that we will provide ways to identify when we have used it to generate content on our services.

Ultimately, harnessing the potential of AI is not something a company can do alone. In 2020, I I shared my opinion that AI should be regulated in a way that balances innovation and potential harm. Now that technology is at a tipping point and I’m heading back to Europe this week, I still believe that AI is too important not to regulate and too important not to regulate well.

Developing policy frameworks that anticipate potential harm and unlock benefits will require in-depth discussions between governments, industry experts, publishers, academia, and civil society. Legislators may not need to start from scratch: existing regulations provide useful frameworks for managing the potential risks of new technologies. But continued investment in research and development for responsible AI will be important, as will ensuring AI is applied safely, especially where regulations are still evolving.

Greater international cooperation will be key. The United States and Europe are allies and strategic partners. It is important that the two work together to create robust innovation-friendly frameworks for emerging technology, based on shared values ​​and goals. We will continue to work with experts, social scientists, and entrepreneurs who are creating standards for responsible AI development on both sides of the Atlantic.

AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the world to achieve its climate goals, deliver sustainable growth, maintain global competitiveness, and much more. However, we are still in the early days, and there is a lot of work ahead. We look forward to doing that work with others and together building AI safely and responsibly so that everyone can benefit.