In a world where other AI CEOs have said "developers are now 10x more productive," it sounds implausible that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would posit such an incremental impact out of the technology that their company has invested billions to build out. And yet, in a moment of inspiring honesty, Pichai withdrew from the CEO's usual role as "Hypemaster of the Universe," and delivered a nuclear payload of truth. Every beleaguered CTO breathed a heavy sigh of relief, as they realized they weren't the only leader struggling to meet Sam Altman's aspirations.
In fact, let's do a CEO-round "Tale of the Tape" for this pair.
 |  | |
Name | Sundar Pichai | Sam Altman |
Company (tenure) | OpenAI | |
AI Impact on Development | 1.1x | |
Also known for | Played a key role in developing Google Chrome, considered for CEO positions at Twitter and Microsoft before becoming Google's CEO in 2015 | Lifelong vegetarian, a self-described "doomsday prepper," and was once the CEO of Reddit for just eight days |
Notable quote | AI's change is "more profound than electricity or fire," and the future of AI is "not about replacing humans, it's about augmenting human capabilities" | "AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies". [In jest, one hopes?] |
linkSpecific context of quote
What was the specific context in which Sundar made this observation? It was on the Lex Fridman, Podcast #471. The podcast went live on June 5, 2025. Highly recommend, if you want to get a take on the future from one of a CEO who is cultivating a reputation for unvarnished truth.
Lex Fridman (01:30:52): I have to ask you, on the programming front, AI is getting really good at programming. Gemini, both the agentic and just the LLM has been incredible, so a lot of programmers are really worried that they will lose their jobs. How worried should they be, and how should they adjust so they can be thriving in this new world, or more and more code is written by AI?
Sundar Pichai (01:31:16) I think a few things. Looking at Google, we’ve given various stats around 30% of code now uses AI- generated suggestions or whatever it is. But the most important metric, and we carefully measure it is, like, how much has our engineering velocity increased as a company due to AI, right? It’s tough measure, and we rigorously try to measure it, and our estimates are that number is now at 10%, right?
Transcript for Sundar Pichai: CEO of Google and Alphabet | Lex Fridman Podcast #471 - Lex Fridman