‘Artificial intelligence excites me,’ Google founder says
“I can’t imagine a better time to be a computer scientist than now. I’m a computer scientist, and I want to be part of the artificial intelligence era,” said Sergey Brin, 51, who co-founded Google in 1998 with his friend Larry Page.
Making a surprising appearance at Google’s annual developers conference on Tuesday, Brin, who stepped down from Google in 2019, returned to the company a year ago as an advisor following a security breach involving ChatGPT and artificial intelligence.
‘Artificial intelligence truly excites me,’ he tells Ynet, and it’s the reason for his return to Google after retirement. According to him, the most impressive part of Google’s new model, “Gemini 1.5 Pro,” unveiled yesterday, is its inclusiveness – from the ability to summarize multiple Gmail messages to software encoding.
What’s your favorite use of artificial intelligence?
“Software encoding. It wasn’t perfect, but there were a few minor issues I cleaned up shortly after rejoining. Even though I’m retired, this AI boom requires me to be part of it. It’s just so exciting and rewarding. I mostly learn a lot from the engineers. I feel fortunate.”
Exactly 12 years ago, Brin led the demonstration of Google Glass at the Google I/O developers’ conference – the company’s smart glasses, which were ahead of their time. Yesterday, Google unveiled its new artificial intelligence project, “Astra,” in a video featuring similar experimental glasses that can capture or record objects and use AI to identify them.
“It’s like the perfect hardware,” he said. “Ten years after me, it’s a winning application, but we failed in timing.” “Something wearable,” he added, “is more ideal hardware than a phone: many things you want information and explanations for, like cooking or sports – it’s embarrassing if you do it with hands holding a phone. So that guy’s dad was pretty cool for that. I wish I timed it a bit better.”
When asked if he plans to make a comeback, Brin said, “We’ll have to think about it.”
