- The free and open internet is under attack around the world, Google chief Sundar Pichai Warns.
- Pichai says many countries are regulating the information flow, and the model is often taken for granted.
- In an in-depth interview with the BBC, Pichai also addresses tax, privacy, and data controversies.
- And he claims artificial intelligence is more profound than fire, electricity, or the internet.
- He is the chief executive of one of the most complex, consequential, and rich institutions in history.
Tech Heralds– The Google CEO, Sundar Pichai Warnes on Public Internet –information online being equally accessible and available to everybody – has been a ‘huge strength for good’ that is ‘taken for granted. While Mr Pichai did not directly refer to China, he did make the point: ‘None of our major products and services is available in China.
He called artificial intelligence (AI) more intense than fire or electricity and said secrecy is ‘foundational to everything we do’. Sundar Pichai’s firm posted big revenues of $55.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, but he claimed against suggestions it’s a ‘surveillance capitalist’
Mr Pichai was born in 1972 in Tamil Nadu, in southern India, before going to the US to study materials science and engineering at Stanford University. He joined Google in 2004 before rising the ranks and becoming the CEO of Alphabet Inc, the conglomerate under which Google works, and of Google itself, in 2015.
In a Recent Interview, Sundar Picha said, I think the free and open internet has been a huge strength for good, and I think we take it for granted a bit. ‘Each country now there’s a dispute about what language is okay and what should be allowed. ‘In some ways, I think we pull back from the bigger picture where many countries around the world are regulating the flow of data, and I think we are inducing much more rigid boundaries.
‘I hope there are more powerful voices – big companies do support for it, Google has proudly stood for freedom of expression and the flow of data in a free and open way – but I do think the model is being attacked.’
Mr Sundar Pichai also called technology including AI ‘an enabler’ but said it doesn’t surely have the answers to the ‘more extensive and more meaningful questions.
BBC: Google boss Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom
