Every technological advancement is a boon until it becomes a bane. Technology evolved with the fatal assumption that only good and/or educated people will use them. It never imagined that educated bad people will use them which is a catastrophic failure in risk assessment. What is true though is that the fears and greed of humanity cannot be changed because it has always been a part of its DNA. No technological advancement is more important than humanity's advancement.
To one of the commenters suggesting Sundar being born in a 3rd world country as proof that he doesn't have the wherewithal to handle a giant corporation such as Google, you have no idea about Chennai and its quality of education, competition or resilience. I do, because I'm from the very area he is from. Anyway, why do developed countries still have poverty? "Third world countries" have the excuse for population, density, pollution, competition etc. What is the excuse for developed countries to have poverty? Greed. When 40 million out of 300 million live in poverty, even factoring in access to credit unlike those from so many developing or underdeveloped countries, why is poverty still an issue in developed world?
7
"Don't be evil" - define evil + stick with your motto. That seems to be a good basis.
3
“One of the things that’s not well understood, I think, is that we operate in many countries where there is censorship. When we follow “right to be forgotten” laws, we are censoring search results because we’re complying with the law.”
Sounds like Adolf Eichmann. Fortunately, in the USA following the dollar is a legal pursuit.
3
Many comments accused Sundar Pichai for comparing the European "right to be forgotten" requirement to China's Great Firewall.
Sundar Pichai is right: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems.’ Technology is just one of many tools to manage human problems. China's leaders seem to understand it and are astute to create their own internet ecology early on.
Western thinking and system is incompatible with Chinese ways. In their interaction with the rest of the world China mainly focus on buy & sell contracts and can choose to set aside other considerations if necessary.
To their credit Chinese government demonstrated they can pull millions of people out of abject poverty in a relatively short time. Cleaning up environmental damages is another high priority task. China still have much to do on many fronts. It's understandable anything that generate instability will not be tolerated. Banning Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter in China do not cause any inconvenience to Chinese people. It spurs software development. They just wrote their own versions that work even better.
China is still a huge potential profit center for these American companies though. By now China holds the key of admission. Take it or leave it.
2
Sundar Pichai of Google: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems, It Just Sends Off The Resources and Wealth To Guys Like Us’
1
As an engineer of 40 years (software and networks) I don't see my job as "solving humanity's problems". I don't know any engineer that does. In the final judgement, it's society and history that decides if we have, or not.
My father was a pioneer engineer in jet aviation. I build international data networks and cellular systems. One brought peoples of the world physically together, and the second allows someone now living 12,000 miles from their home country to stay in touch.
As I like to say, "it's hard to bomb people you know". So, at the same time we make war more devastating through technology, we make it harder to imagine actually going to war.
The people that run tech companies have a different job, and while they may have been engineers early in life they are now marketers and tasked with hyping their companies [to non-engineers. People who have money]. There is a lot of "useful hyperbole" as our fearless leader likes to say.
1
Technology, by definition, is a way of doing things. As such, it solves problems by finding new and better ways of achieving what we want to achieve. From this angle, it is indeed expected that technology "solve problems." However, when the pace of advancement in technology advances far beyond the need we may have, technology becomes an end in and of itself; technology for technology's sake. Then, it can start doing unexpected and even harmful things.
Look around and you will see examples of each. The constant screen attention disconnected many from their environment. On the other hand, the same technology gives us a chance to seek urgent help when we need it.
We must learn to regulate technology, as a society and as individuals.
1
I've worked in tech, primarily IT, for 40 years, and all I can say about technology is it is an amplifier of human abilities, both good and bad and that is not going to change.
It favors the people that can afford it simply due to its costs and is a big reason we continue to see tech being controlled by fewer and fewer huge companies and a very few super rich benefiting exponentially more than the lower income 50% of the population.
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Innovation at Google make one feel as though they are above it all, have figured out the new work continuum. Then workplace sexual assault comes roaring along and we realize, they are just as horrible as most large, Male dominated companies
2
I was surprised his son mines ethereum. Mining of this cryptocurrency requires huge amounts of electricity. But of course there are those who think it is the wave of the future, making transactions secret.
Usually it's done by large banks of computers near cheap electricity in a cold climate for cooling. China has banned it.
The world has many problems, chief among them climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. We don't need to dream up new ways to use electricity.
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I liked Google more when their motto was "Don't be evil". It seems the need for money and more money causes you to rethink your loyalties.
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Yes, technology does not always solve problems, but it certainly can create problems. Project Dragonfly is a case in point. Helping dictators censor and control media speaks to the motivation of the dictatorships and people who help build the infrastructures of their control.
1
Technological progress is improving the standard of living of poor people and I remember and witness its two types
1) Used Flexi-sheets ( Plastic sheets on which printing is done and are used like billboards ) are making their way into poor people lives
--they are getting used inside their houses
-- and also to reinforce the roofs, walls, curtains etc so as to have ambience inside
2) Use-and-throw drinking-water plastic bottles are also re-used by the poor either to carry free water for drinking purposes or the bottles are used for other purposes for their convenience.
Well, the advances in Artificial Intelligence and other fields will certainly have implicit impact (For example: Pedestrian safety ethics of the autonomous vehicles) on the lives of many...But, "humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems" is a big goal.
i made it only through the subtitle. I am horrified and saddened to read the implication that living without a refrigerator is a hardship. I grew u pin the USA without a refrigerator because we were too poor to buy one or pay for the electricity to run one. What I learned is that refrigerators are not a necessity. In Europe they use tiny refrigerators, if any.
If people did not have refrigerators that would be one more step towards stopping climate change.
This attitude that things like refrigerators are a necessity ruin the planet.
Don't get me started on paper towels, air conditioning...
6
Refrigerator has been immensely helpful in hot tropical country like India. It freed up women who had to do the cooking every day to cook may be once or twice a week while storing the dinner for the week in the refrigerator and join the workforce as gainfully employed
I see that IIT taught him how to code very well but his MBA did not teach him much.
One would have hoped that his rags to riches story would have made him a better person instead of a bitter person.
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@SridharC I did't notice from the article that Pichai was a bitter person. He seems to me a realist, who sees things as they are.
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@SridharCWHere are you seeing "bitter"? He seems like an intelligent, well-spoken individual. And how do you know he is not a "better person"? And how do you know he wasn't already a "better person" and he didn't need his "rags to riches" story to be one?
2
I feel for Sundar Pichai, especially as a fellow Indian American from the same city and probably from the same sub-culture/sect. But...the PR folk have gotten to him. He cannot go off script to speak his mind, now that he's CEO of a large company.
On the other hand Google is a "for profit company." No amount of "Do not be evil" etc will mask the fact that they compete with other sharks, especially Apple (a company who I used to love,) Microsoft, I still bear the scar :) Facebook and Amazon. These companies are in their league as well as a couple of Chinese and Korean companies.
They cannot take the high road and quit operating in countries that we as some of the citizens of the U.S. would like them to; this is anyway hypocritical because a lot of us shop on Amazon, Walmart, buy Apple product, use Microsoft operating systems, opther software and use FB.
If we want to effect a change, start with the political process and push our politicians to make a difference. Maybe divest from these companies if you have stock, otherwise its all just noise.
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Mr Pichai is a very bright and talented individual, there is no question about that. However, this interview shows the problem of having somebody who grew up in a third world country lead a company with the influence and reach that Google has.
We shouldn't measure Google against the subpar standards that are common in India but against the standards of the country that fought 2 world wars to liberate Europe and that won the cold war against the Soviet Union.
I think that Google's problems are only starting. It takes a lot naivete to believe that the 20,000 Google employees who walked out last week did so motivated exclusively by the mistreatment of employees who pressed sexual harassment charges. While protesting the mistreatment of the accusers played a factor to be sure, to me, the walkout is symptomatic of a rotten corporate culture. Probably many employees used the walkout as a way to express their disagreement over how the company is run and decisions such as considering a censored version of Google for China.
Honestly, comparing the "right to be forgotten" that the European Union offers to individual citizens to a regime that jails political dissidents is as tone deaf as it comes. Symptomatic of the aforementioned third world mindset.
7
@Ethan, I agree with your point that the Google walkout is about deeper issues with their corporate culture. However, I think Pichai's comments reflect not his naivete per se but the fact that he has to stick to Google's talking points. Also, your comments about "third world standards" reflect a great deal of elitism. First of all, educational standards in many schools in Chennai are far superior to that of average schools in the US. Second, going by your logic, someone who grows up in a US inner city or a Native American reservation in the US should also be precluded from holding a high tech post. On the contrary, I believe that people from such backgrounds can bring much-needed perspectives to Silicon Valley.
5
He lost me at the spurious comparison of totalitarian censorship with individual privacy rights.
A shill.
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This sounds like a PR piece.Whereever he slept while growing up in India,the Google boss is now presiding over a huge machine that is trying to monitor and control whatever we are doing with our lives !
6
Kudos to Mr. Pichai's PR team they are not just the the best pr money can buy but clearly worth every penny. Calling this a puff piece doesn't do it justice closer to pure paid content. After all the recent scandals a google from the secret china project leak, the military contracts and the the sex abuse pay outs and walk out Sundars people are wise to take proactive steps before the campaign for his ouster picks up stream
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Yes, a very bright single dimensional person, but nothing more beyond that. Only profits.
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While Sundar Pichai comes across as relatively more mature than the devious Mark Zukerberg, fact is that companies like Google and Facebook look at every single, complex human issue as an "engineering" problem.
This "engineering mindset" is embedded in their cultural DNA. And it is easy to hide policy, governance, vision and moral failures while maximizing profits. When unintended consequences happen and the world has to pay a steep price, these companies can always escape blame, deflect and promise "engineering advances" to solve these issues.
Trump is Russia's gift to America delivered by Facebook and Google. So, are the hundreds or thousands dead in Burma, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Hate, bigotry and propaganda have found an ally in social media and their impact has been magnified thousands of times.
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Mr.Pichai is right. Technology makes and alters the way we carry out our profession but never modify the human instinct and hence the outlook. Technology could read the probability of man's thought or intention and it's impossible to read his action and its aftermath that makes the deliberation imperative
to find a solution to minimize recurrence .
1
Google CEO sold all his Google shares and clearly is not willing to take risk in the company he runs, what do you expect to learn from a CEO like him?
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I don't want to think about it too deeply because it seems a waste of time to try and find some good in a corporate pronouncement. But then I don't have to in this instance, because what I have learned in life having done some investigation and undertaken thought about the efforts of corporations is this. It's all about the money. Whatever they say, no matter who they are, what they are doing is trying to make as much money as possible and if that involves lying, manipulation, brainwash techniques, buying politicians or any number of other dubious, immoral or illegal acts then that is what they will do. I am just glad Google doesn't have a stake in any of the various poisons the people have been exposed to over the last hundred or so years because Google has no oversight by any entity that has a responsibility to the people of this country. And no, the SEC doesn't do anything for the people. They are so toothless that they are a huge joke just like the BBB.
6
One thing that really displeases me about Google is how it works with 1000 of the largest companies in the world to teach them how to be more effective at getting us to buy their products.
I don't think that an emphasis on increasing the corporate profits of already highly profitable companies, most of which use way too many natural resources, is a societal good. And needless to say, I will take a wild guess and say most of these companies aren't good corporate citizens and pay as few taxes as possible. To say the least. shame!
7
Will this headline become the new official corporate motto?
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Everybody in this country is responsible for our collective humanity.
It seems like every time this man opens his mouth, he sticks both feet in.
3
I share a comment below about sleeping on the floor.
I know it made the headlines - but it is nothing if not very common in India.
I had the exact upbringing in Mumbai that this man had. I am a few years senior at 70.
I slept in floor - but there was a mattress - as it is in most cases, and probably in his case. So, this headline and his description is slightly misleading.
I remember when a "fridge" entered my mother's apartment. I was a silver medalist in IIT Mumbai - one of it's first aeronautical engineering graduates. And then, graduated from Caltech - and ended up spending life time in the oil patch - a little earlier before the pc age.
All too say - that this man's life experience is not terribly dissimilar to many from India who ended up in America. I am of course most grateful for that.
To me, the issue is can an engineer really think social issues??
And I submit that this man will fall short on that score - because our problem solving mind does not allow fuzziness.
Just see Elon operate - for the most part - he appears tone deaf socially - but is a brilliant engineer.
20
@Neil Well,, I went to IIT-Madras, I am the same batch as Sundar (he went to the high school at IIT-M, vana vani school, but went to IIT-Kharagpur), also have an Ivy League MBA . However I didnt have to sleep on the floor , I always slept on a bed, and yes we had a fridge at home for as long as I can remember, TV and telephone came to our house some 5 years before I started college. Sundar grew up in a large Metro, I grew up in a small town.This sleeping on the floor business is fluff and not subtantive. The point you raised about "social issues" is however subtantive. But think of it. If courts , lawyers and politicians and even a broader public can hold views, opine and decide on deeply techincal issues from relative less mundane stuff like auto emmissions, environmental pollution, health , sanitation to areas which are fraught with ethical issues like medical research, bio tech and genetics , areas where the "social" types have absolutely no clue, why do they presume that a person with a science and engineering background cant handle "social" fuzziness. Engineering and science are not exact like a math formula, much of the knowledge comes from experience,experimentation and learning from accumulated knowledge. Even with all the tools and scientific sophistication and accumulated knowledge, you would still test a new product (like say an F-35 fighter) throughly with the humility you missed stuff by quite a margin in certain cases. We deal with fuzziness on a daily basis !
3
Technology cannot solve all humanities problems - hooray! I couldn’t agree more with this statement and the faith that we seem to place in technology to do so is misplaced. It is amazing how easily humans are ready to abdicate our responsibility for the world’s problems and to instead think ourselves clever for inventing shiny new machines. However, the second part of the statement that we are over-indexing our blame on technology for causing those problems coming from a tech CEO is alarming. It the attitude of someone who can only see the technology in isolation without wanting to take responsibility for its consequences. It someone who wants the simple life without any complexity or difficulties. There are always going to be questions of whether we should do what might be possible and how it should be done. Trying to ignore or distance oneself from these issues is why tech companies are finding life more ‘challenging’ these days. It is also why the state needs to regulate them.
11
The statement that technology doesn't solve humanity's problems is absurd. Assuming that being cold was a problem for humanity, the control of fire solved that problem. Same with cooking food. The wheel is another technology that solved problems for humanity. Humans have been developing technology to solve problems since they became human. Nor are they the only primates to develop technology to solve problems, and there are non-primates that use technology to solve problems.
8
@J Chaffee
I interpreted the statement that technology doesn't solve humanity's problems to mean that humans' tendencies toward greed and hate will continue to exist, no matter what technology we are using. It seems ridiculous that we still have wars and extreme poverty in this world, when we could use the technological wonders we have created to provide food and shelter for everyone. Instead, some of us use technology to build weapons, and social media to spread hate. The fault lies not with the technology but within mens' hearts (and yes, I do mean men, because it it testosterone and the male need to dominate that causes wars). The advent of computers has created many wonderful ways to improve our lives but also has made it easier for bad actors to commit crimes.
Unions need to be formed. CEOs are working the employees 12 hours per day 6 days per week. Those on H1B visas are tied to the company and can not change jobs. It is a very abusive system leading to ambulances pulling up to companies, people heading to the ER, employees suddenly resigning due to stress and early retirements. I kid you not. There are zero protections for workers.
18
I realized the importance of Google when, recently in China, I could not access any of its apps, especially Search. Google Translate does work in China, and I suspect the hard-nosed businessmen that run Google still want to sneak into that market through some such backdoor - but it is clear that the 'Dont Be Evil' idealism was lost long ago when Google can refuse to work with the US Pentagon but still keep insisting that it needs a product in China.
No Sundar, Europe's right to be forgotten is not the same as China's duty to be never forgotten. China's Communist Party will never let go of its surveillance of its people, and are not going to let Google profit from it.
7
@Ramesh G I suppose you are going to bash your iThing with a hammer , stop shopping at WalMart or any made in China goods /service at Amazon and you will not buy a Microsoft product. So why put the albatross around Google's neck alone. Why not others ? Why do they alone have to carry the China cross, when they dont even operate there. Apple and GM and others have massive businesses in China which contribute a significant portion of their revenues!
@VeeJay I can tell you I for one don't shop at Walmart, nor would anyone I know. When I shop on Ebay, I make sure to check USA only as a location for items (which doesn't preclude them being made in China.)
I tend to buy second hand a lot, but when I am buying something new, I certainly will look for country of origin, and not buy it if it was made in China. That said, there are certain things from China I am willing to buy - like Chinese pottery - but Chinese pottery that looks Chinese, not Italian lookalike pottery. Some of us really do care, and walk our talk.
BTW, I've noticed even Indian style clothing is coming from China now too.
@VeeJay - not sure of your point, mine was about surveillance data collection of Chinese residents by China, which I think no company should be part of. Apple, GM or Walmart dont spy on Chinese for their government, do they?
A grain of salt:
When the service is free, your personal information is the product.
Remember: Google only exists to exploit your personal information. Period.
Beware what you share.
24
While Sundar comes across as a humble person, it seems to me he is not humble enough to realize he has no clue of enormity of the social challenge facing Google. I don't it is related to his being an immigrant as Zuckerberg has no clue either.
They have created the template for successful products. We are addicted to using and 'improving' them for the good and bad in our lives. How much responsibility do they share for the harm coming out of them now and for the new ways they are going to get used in the future?
12
He seems like a nice person, but I think everything the tech titans says needs to be taken with a dollop of salt.
7
" My son is 11 years old, and he is mining Ethereum and earning money.
My son still doesn’t have a phone."
Doesn't sound like your son needs a "phone". Cryptocurrency at 11? Hmmm.
"Social networks" and social media generally have caused a major cultural upheaval. Ask Myanmar and the Philippines just how much actual death and destruction social media is directly responsible for (they will deny responsibility, of course and go to their old "we're just continuing the conversation" fallback). They ARE responsible. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram MUST be regulated. They have no desire to self-police, no matter their claims to the contrary. They serve the ROI master ONLY.
17
Of course there is no silver bullet to solve whatever someone might think is "humanity's issues". Only humans using whatever tools that exist can address these sorts of things, and many have no "solutions", but rather adaptations and acceptance of conditions that are not what some might want. Thinking otherwise is foolish.
1
There is a world of difference between allowing someone the privacy of keeping their personal information out of the reach of strangers, and allowing a Communist government to censor and effectively edit the entire Internet. And, oh yeah, reporting to that same government when someone enters the "wrong" search terms.
If Sundar, Larry, Sergei, and the thousands of Google employees who are developing Dragonfly don't get that, they are not very smart. More likely, their deluding themselves in order to make themselves rich.
Irony of ironies - many of those same Google employees protest when their company develops products and services to aid our national defense. But they're more than happy to prop up Communist China.
26
I share the Chennai environs with Sundar Pichai except I lived in more spartan environment than he did. Yes, I slept on the floor too and never felt sorry for it. I too went to IIT and eventually ended up in USA. One cannot rest content with what happens in the world today. Today's maverick may be tomorrow's statesman. As Sundar said technology creates more problems than it solves. It is always so. Research into a problem always opens up a vast unknown as I found out early in my scientific career.
A global company like Google has to have its horizons studied in multiple ways. There is no single solution for various countries. It is my feeling that the more educated you are the more problems you will encounter. Ultimately it is a clash of thoughts and one needs a collective mind to identify the problems and solve them. There is no end in sight.
7
There once was a young Chinese man, who had leukemia. He lived in a small city and the doctor there could not help him. So when he found out about his disease, he searched online to look for the best specialist in the country to cure this disease.
He did not know that the search engine he used (the dominant one in China currently) was full of paid contents as the top search results. So he went to such specialist based on the search result, and did not really get any proper medical treatment. He died after a few months.
Had Google search been available in China, he might be able to find a real specialist to treat his disease. He could have used Google to look for a good doctor. Or the presence of Google, the competition from Google search, could have made the current dominant search engine more honest. Either way, that young man could live.
People in the US think about Google entering China as an ideology issue or political issue. Sometimes, from Chinese prospective, it could be a life or death issue.
7
@zj If China simply permitted Google through their Great Firewall, like every other nation on Earth pretty much does already, then this wouldn't have even been a problem to begin with.
Blame the Chinese government, not Google.
7
@zj
Your comment is ironic. If you search for 'Emergency Room' on google maps the places at the top of the list aren't closest or have the best outcome measures. No, the one's at the top are paid advertisements. That's here in the United States. How is that different from the Chinese situation you describe?
2
The argument is both right and misleading. Certainly, addressing problems at the level of'humanity' guess beyond technology solutions.
However, the high ethics accompanying Silicon Valley pitches (think sharing economy) should not be allowed to come without an embracement of responsibility for what is the outcome in the real world.
That is something that should be accepted by every company whose technology has the potential to be life-changing, and not only by those where the offline experience is part of the official workflow.
1
To an American audience growing up without refrigerators might seem like a person grew up in humble circumstances. But, one has to compare with what other people in similar circumstances had in India at that time. Many people in India's middle class grew up around the same time without refrigerators or tv's (till the mid-70's only seven cities had tv broadcasts in India and national broadcasts started only in the early 80's). As India has become more prosperous, more people have acquired such household appliances. From his wikipedia entry it appears that Sundar Pichai did go to some of the best schools in India and the US.
18
Sundar Pichai is a techie who rose through the ranks solving computing problems. It is not fair to expect him to be a politician, an attorney, an ethicist, a diplomat, a humanitarian all in one. He should appoint an ethics advisory board to make up for the training he did not have
38
He seemed like a genuinely thoughtful person until he suggested equivalence between Europe 's individual right to be forgotten law with China's demand that the world forget what happened in Tienanmen Square on June 4, 1989. China's brutal repression then and continued human right's violations now should be highlighted everywhere, not censored by the world's largest news information service purely in the pursuit of more profits.
42
It’s probably best that someone with his humble beginnings addresses or validates such a statement( technology not solving humanities problems). He was and still is fascinated with technology’s innovations but, at the same time perhaps more so
than us, still very much in touch with humanitarian issues a result of first hand experience which defined in part the person he is today. Having not forgotten his history gives him perspective. I for some time always assumed that technology was a cornucopia of sorts but, later came to find that it’s not necessarily so. Addressing our humanity Sets us square once more with our core values which have been slowly eroding with time. Technology is a vehicle/tool however, I believe we are losing sight of how it is we function. It’s apples and oranges as far as I’m concerned.
1
I'm glad this interview got published. It seems that he is conflicted within himself on whether or not Silicon Valley or technology is the panacea for the world's problems. In my opinion, neither are. Both are tools and means of capitalism to extract value out of an individual. Google products' - Google Search, Chrome Browser, Gmail all are terrific because of the heavy engineering effort behind them and how user friendly and smart they are. But at the end of the day, it's no humanitarian effort that Google is doing by making these services. It like other companies expects to turn a profit from all the data it has mined. Whether it is to continually sell things through ads to people who it enabled to get addicted to devices or sell their information and technology for the US governments' xenophobic policies or quietly glaze over human rights violations in China to reap a profit from the search monetization market yet to be tapped. It is not about one industry or company being better than the other. But rather under capitalism, can any company truly claim to improve lives of people and the planet without hurting anyone.
7
I appreciate this interview. But it is disingenuous to compare censorship in China with "right to be forgotten" laws.
The latter ensure that one piece of bad coverage, one mistake, even one crime from long ago, does not become the very first thing every new job prospect, every new acquaintance, hears. It helps ensure people can recover from a mistake without carrying stigma forever. Yes, it's "censorship" in the sense that it's removing information--but only after the period of time society has collectively deemed appropriate for someone to get a fresh start.
The former is an authoritarian attempt to define the nature of truth. It's a government wanting to ensure their population is unaware of any sort of dissent, especially the justified kind.
A number of years ago, I was in Hong Kong for work and there was a massive protest against Beijing. Streets were flooded with tens of thousands of people, marching, carrying signs, chanting. The day after, it was all anyone could talk about: newspapers, TV were full of it.
I then flew to Beijing. Crickets. No mention anywhere. Nothing.
This sort of censorship alters the reality citizens inhabit in a fundamental way. It creates a "truth" that there is no dissent, that any attempts at protest will be lone voices in the wilderness and will have no impact (short of getting you into trouble).
These situations are not moral equivalents, or even close. I'm sure Pichai is aware of this. So what's he playing at here?
54
@ae At the end of the day its about making money and the pursuit of the largest growing market in the World
7
It is about time that a technology executive admitted this. I very much hope that more of this kind of humility grows within the tech sector.
3