Sergey Brin’s return to Google appears to be continuing in full swing, with the founder helping lead the company’s AI efforts.

Brin returned to work at Google in early 2023 as part of the company’s attempt to catch up with OpenAI and Microsoft in the race to deploy generative AI. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai issued a “code red,” an all-hands effort, and brought both founders back to help brainstorm.

A few months after returning, Brin was reportedly working at the office several days a week, but it seems he is now working on AI every day. In an interview (lightly edited for grammar) with All-In Podcast’s David Friedberg, Brin provided insight into his work and just how much he’s working on AI.

“Honestly, like pretty much every day,” Brin said. “I think as a computer scientist, I’ve never seen anything as exciting as all of the AI progress that’s happened the last few years.”

“Every month there’s like a new amazing capability and I’m like probably doubly wowed as everybody else is that computers can do this,” Brin added. “I really got back into the technical work because I just don’t want to miss out on this as a computer scientist.”

On AI’s Relationship to Search

Friedberg asked if AI was “an extension of search or a rewriting of how people retrieve information.”

Brin made clear his believe that AI goes far beyond search, touching on many different aspects of life and work.

“I think that AI touches so many different elements of day-to-day life, and sure, search is one of them,” Brin said. “But it kind of covers everything. For example, programming itself, the way that I think about it is very different now.

“Writing code from scratch feels really hard, compared to just asking the AI to do it,” Brin added, to laughter from the audience. “I’ve written a little bit of code myself, just for kicks, just for fun. And then sometimes I’ve had the AI write the code for me, which was fun.”

Brin went on to describe using the AI model to write code that generated a bunch of Sudoku puzzles, and 30 minutes later the AI was done. He said that even Google’s other engineers were impressed before noting that they didn’t use AI as much as he thought they should.

“They were kind of impressed because they don’t honestly use the AI tools for their own coding as much as I think they ought to.”

On Individual Models vs One ‘God Model’

Friedberg asked Brin if he thought AI would continue to be divided into task-specific AI models or if he believed the industry would succeed in creating “God Models,” AI models that are so good and well-rounded that they can be used across industries and applications.

Brin noted that current models were already much closer to that reality than they were 10 or 15 years ago, when chess playing models were big news. He expressed his belief the trend will continue.

“But I do think the trend is to have more a unified model,” Brin said. “I don’t know if I’d call it a God Model, but to have certainly sort of shared architectures and ultimately shared models.”

Google’s Conservative Culture and Taking Risks

One of the criticism Google has faced in the AI race is the conservative nature of its approach. Early on, investors and insiders were unhappy that OpenAI and Microsoft beat the company to the punch, launching the first widely used AI models. In our own coverage at WPN, we criticized Google’s conservative approach, while saying Microsoft—a much older company—was acting more like a fearless startup.

Friedberg addressed those issues with Brin, citing a story of Brin pushing engineers to include AI’s code-writing ability into Gemini, even if it was not 100% error-free.

“I think there’s a little bit of fear,” Brin acknowledged. “Yeah, we were too timid to deploy them, and for a lot of good reasons. Some make mistakes, they say embarrassing things, sometimes it’s just kind of embarrassing how dumb they are. Even today’s latest and greatest things make really stupid mistakes people would never make.

Ultimately, however, Brin believes AI’s ability to empower individuals to do things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do is worth the risk of embarrassment.

“At the same time, they’re incredibly powerful, and they can help you do things you never would have done, and I’ve programmed really complicated things with my kids,” Brin said. “They’ll just program it because they just ask the AI using all these really complicated APIs all kinds of things that would take like a month to learn.

“So I think that capability is magic, and you need to be willing to have some embarrassments and take some risks. And I think we’ve gotten better at that. You guys have probably seen some of our embarrassments.

Optimism About the AI’s Future

Brin concluded the podcast by voicing his optimism about AI’s future, and just how much it brings to the table, much like Google search did decades before.

“I think there’s tremendous value to humanity,” Brin said. “And I think if you think back like when I was in college, let’s say, and there wasn’t really a proper internet or web like we know it today. The amount of effort it would take to get basic information, the amount of effort it would take to communicate before cell phones and things.

“We’ve gained so much capability across the world, but this new AI is another big capability and pretty much everybody in the world can get access to it in one form or another these days, and I think it’s super exciting.”