Google Cloud CEO Says AI Won’t Automate Everyone’s Jobs

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says AI isn’t here to replace you — it’s here to help you keep up.

In an interview with the tech newsletter Big Technology, Kurian dismissed the hype that AI will automate so much work that it will cost everyone their jobs. He said AI’s role for the foreseeable future is to bridge the gap between what workers can do today and what they aspire to do in the future.

“I think there is definitely a middle ground,” he said.

Last year, when Google unveiled its Customer Engagement Suite — a collection of AI-powered tools on Google Cloud designed to enhance customer service — Kurian said some users were initially apprehensive.

“When we first introduced it, people asked, ‘Does this mean we won’t need customer service agents anymore?'” he told Big Technology. “But the reality is, almost none of our clients have let anyone go.”

He said the Customer Engagement Suite is helping customers get answers to questions they are otherwise unwilling to call a service agent to address.

Kurian, a self-educated immigrant from India, worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and then spent over two decades at Oracle before jumping to Google. He also has a twin brother named George, another big name in Silicon Valley, who is the CEO of data infrastructure company NetApp.

Kurian is not the only member of Google’s leadership team to say that AI is an accelerator — not an automator.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on an episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast in June that the company has seen a 10% boost in the productivity of its engineers. With that, he said, the company expects to hire more engineers in the coming year.

“The opportunity space of what we can do is expanding,” he said. He added that he hopes AI will handle repetitive tasks, allowing engineers to spend more time on creative and fulfilling work.