Google Execs Say Employees Have To 'Be More AI-Savvy'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Google executives are pushing employees to act with more urgency in their use of artificial intelligence as the company looks for ways to cut costs. That was the message at an all-hands meeting last week, featuring CEO Sundar Pichai and Brian Saluzzo, who runs the teams building the technical foundation for Google's flagship products. 'Anytime you go through a period of extraordinary investment, you respond by adding a lot of headcount, right?' Pichai said, according to audio obtained by CNBC. 'But in this AI moment, I think we have to accomplish more by taking advantage of this transition to drive higher productivity. We are competing with other companies in the world,' Pichai said at the meeting. 'There will be companies which will become more efficient through this moment in terms of employee productivity, which is why I think it's important to focus on that.'

'We are going to be going through a period of much higher investment and I think we have to be frugal with our resources, and I would strive to be more productive and efficient as a company,' Pichai said, adding that he's 'very optimistic' about how Google is doing. At the meeting, Saluzzo highlighted a number of tools the company is building for software engineers, or SWEs, to help 'everybody at Google be more AI-savvy.' 'We feel the urgency to really quickly and urgently get AI into more of the coding workflows to address top needs so you see a much more rapid increase in velocity,' Saluzzo said. Saluzzo said Google has a portfolio of AI products available to employees 'so folks can go faster.' He mentioned an internal site called 'AI Savvy Google' which has courses, toolkits and learning sessions, including some for individual product areas.

Google's engineering education team, which develops courses for internal and external use, partnered with DeepMind on a training called 'Building with Gemini' that the company will start promoting soon, Saluzzo said. He also referenced a new internal AI coding tool called Cider that helps software engineers with various aspects of the development process. Since May, when the company first introduced Cider, 50% of users tap the service on a weekly basis, Saluzzo said. Regarding Google's internal AI tools, Saluzzo said that employees should 'expect them to continuously get better' and that 'they'll become a pretty integral part of most SWE work.'

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