- The piece discusses Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, and his journey from India to becoming a leader of one of the most dominant corporate forces in the world.
- Pichai had never left India until age 21 and had never flown on an airplane until 1993 when he came to the US to attend Stanford on a full scholarship.
- He initially saw himself working on semiconductors, not consumer internet, but ended up at Google in 2004.
- Pichai felt that Google was a special place and recognized the power of the internet to touch billions of people.
- The piece also mentions Pichai's focus on artificial intelligence and the challenges he faces as the leader of Google in a time of culture wars and employee revolts.

- Sundar Pichai initially focused on being a product guy and building products at Google
- He eventually took on the role of managing the entire product portfolio, which made him feel accountable for the company
- Sundar learned to become a leader by being fully committed to making his work and the people he worked with successful
- He saw being a leader as a way to scale and work on multiple problems at once
- Sundar believes that AI is an important technological advance and Google is investing heavily in it
- AI is already impacting Google's products in various ways, such as providing suggestions in Gmail and translating languages seamlessly
- AI is also being used in areas like mapping buildings in Africa and triaging images for radiologists
- Sundar sees AI as a foundational technology that will power many aspects of Google's business and create new opportunities for revenue.

- Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, discusses the role of AI in diversifying and creating new businesses.
- He acknowledges the ethical concerns surrounding AI and emphasizes the need to preempt and anticipate the negative aspects.
- Pichai highlights Google's early recognition of AI's potential consequences and their efforts to address ethical issues through research and the establishment of AI principles.
- He expresses optimism that Google is approaching AI responsibly and acknowledges the accountability that comes with being a powerful global company.
- Pichai also discusses the future of work, stating that it will be more flexible and remote work will continue to be a part of it.
- He emphasizes the importance of fostering community and collaboration while embracing the opportunities and flexibility that remote work provides.
- Pichai acknowledges the need to adapt physical spaces and technology to accommodate the future of work.
- He mentions that Google's solutions for their own workforce can also be provided to other companies.
- Pichai acknowledges the complexity of being a corporate leader in today's culture wars and the demands for companies to take a stand on various issues, but does not provide a specific approach to weighing in or staying silent.

- Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, discusses the complexity of the CEO role and the importance of empathy and values-driven leadership.
- He advises that CEOs should have a clear set of values and a track record to navigate through challenging situations.
- Pichai manages stress by feeling privileged to work on cutting-edge technology and being optimistic about the benefits of technology.
- To ensure innovation in a large company, Pichai emphasizes the need to fight conservatism, prioritize innovation, and reward efforts rather than just outcomes.
- He believes in setting ambitious goals and rewarding people for taking risks and aiming high.
- Pichai concludes by discussing the importance of creating a culture that supports innovation.

- Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, went from growing up in India to leading one of the world's most powerful corporations.
- He joined Google in 2004 and recognized the potential of the internet to impact billions of people.
- Pichai focused on product development and eventually took on the role of managing the entire product portfolio.
- He believes in the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to drive Google's business and create new opportunities.
- Pichai acknowledges the ethical concerns surrounding AI and emphasizes Google's efforts to address them.
- He discusses the future of work, emphasizing flexibility and the need to adapt physical spaces and technology.
- Pichai acknowledges the complexity of being a corporate leader in culture wars but does not provide a specific approach.
- He emphasizes the importance of empathy, values-driven leadership, and fostering innovation in a large company.

Drive. Docs. Chrome. Maps. Gmail. Android. What do these products have in common? Of course, they’re all Google, but what you may not know is that they all came to fruition under the management of the same person: Sundar Pichai. This track record in product development ultimately landed Sundar the CEO role at one of the biggest, most innovative companies in the world.  

This week on How I Built This Lab, Sundar reflects on the unique journey that led him to Google, and the values that inspire and drive his leadership today. He and Guy also discuss Google’s recent advances in artificial intelligence, and how the company is reimagining the workplace as offices across the globe reopen.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

On the Wisdom From The Top podcast, I talk to leadership experts and some of the world's greatest business leaders about how they lead, innovate, and transform the people around them.

If you're trying to make it in business or just wanna think more like a leader, this show's probably for you.

Listen now to the Wisdom From the Top podcast from Luminary and NPR.

Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab.

So depending on the day, Google is either the third or fourth most valuable company in the world.

Now just to add some perspective, even with the recent slide in the stock market, if Google were a separate country, it would be among the 10 biggest economies in the world.

Google's value is roughly similar to the economic output of countries like Brazil, Australia, or South Korea.

Its products and services touch billions of humans on the planet.

The email systems we use, our cloud storage servers, even the platform I'm typing this introduction on right now.

A part of me, and I hope a part of you, is kind of terrified about that.

And I believe that a part of Google is also terrified about that.

Because what started as a project, famously in a Palo Alto garage, is now 1 of the most dominant corporate forces in the world.

Sundar Pichai, the company's CEO, had never left India until age 21.

In fact, he'd never flown on an airplane until 1993, the year he made the long journey from his home in Chennai, India to the Silicon Valley to attend Stanford on a full scholarship.

And even after a successful run as a product manager overseeing everything from Google Chrome to Google Drive, Sundar never saw himself as a future CEO of the company.

He was happy digging into the hard technical problems he faced.

And today, it's not just technical challenges he faces, but the challenges of trying to lead 1 of the biggest, most visible brands on earth at a time of culture wars, employee revolts and greater scrutiny of tech companies.

A few weeks ago, Google held its annual I.O.

Conference where it unveils new products and technology.

And 1 of the main topics this year, artificial intelligence.

It is, according to Sundar Pichai, 1 of the single most important areas of focus for Google and its future.

Sundar is here to talk about AI, the future of work, how to encourage innovation by allowing for failure, and how he's learning to lead at a very front moment in our history.

So, Sundar, let's start with your life before Google, before you came to the US.

You grew up in mainly in what is now Chennai in India.

And I know you were a student at the Indian Institute of Technology.

And this was in the sort of the early days of what we now call Web 1.0, right, in sort of the late 80s, early 90s.

You were a promising engineering student.

And I read that already as a student, you were sort of focused on microchips and on how computers work.

And I was fascinated by the PC revolution.

I was studying material science, but I was interested in semiconductors as a material.

So I was definitely interested in computers and how semiconductors make computers happen, chip technology, chip fabrication.

And so those were my areas of interest, but I definitely didn't see working on consumer internet as where I would end up.

You could think of something like Intel as more along the lines of what I was thinking about.

Was any part of you thinking, my next step is coming to the United States.

By the time I was in college, given where my interests were shaping up to be in my junior and senior year, I'd started doing some research on semiconductors.

And so literally being in Silicon Valley, working on silicon, wanting to come to Silicon Valley was something naturally I was fascinated about and so was definitely in my radar by that time.

Had you ever been to the United States before 1993?

No, I mean, in fact, my first flight ever in my life was to come to the US.

So, no, I had never been on a plane before the first journey which took me to the US.

went to Pittsburgh first, it's where my uncle was and you know he was faculty at Carnegie Mellon.

He was the first person in my family to kind of make it there and so that played a part in me thinking about coming to the US and hearing from him about the opportunities, how world-class the universities were.

But I first came to Pittsburgh and I stayed there for 2 to 3 weeks before I headed down to California.

Right to California, to Stanford, where you got a scholarship to study.

I know that you did not have access to a computer growing up.

So really your first exposure to a personal computer was not until you got to Stanford in 1993?

In the Indian Institute of Technology, IIT, as we call it, there was definitely a lab.

You know, I didn't have full access to it, but I had maybe used it.

I would say I can count the number of hours, maybe in 1 or 2 hands.

But only when I came to Stanford, there were these labs in which I could go and work and have unlimited access and program.

And so it was like an entire new world opened up for me.

I didn't quite realize at the time the Internet was fully underway.

I was just fascinated by just having access to so many computers.

I mean, 1993 is like, God, just seems like, you know, a millennium ago.

I remember being overseas in the mid-90s, and it was different.

You know, calling my parents in Los Angeles, for example, was a big deal.

You know, you'd quickly get on the phone, have a quick chat, and maybe they would pick up, and you know, that was it, you'd write letters.

This was your first time in the United States.

What do you remember about being in the United States at Stanford at the time.

My girlfriend was back in India and you mentioned what it is to communicate.

And it was about, in Stanford from within campus at that time to call back to India was around

You know, and so within about a week of every month, I probably was broke, mostly calling my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, and a lot of letters, etc.

But definitely it was tough to communicate what we take for granted, what's probably impossible to explain to the current generation, but communication was really hard.

And so I definitely felt lonely, but it was an extraordinary place.

And I made a lot of friends and soon I settled in, but it was a definite transition coming in and settling down into the country.

You would stay on for an MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton.

By the time you got here and started studying here, was it clear to you that you were going to make your future in the United States, that this was where you were going to establish your life?

Or did you think maybe you'd go back to India?

I think for me, academically, coming to a place like Stanford and seeing the access and I wanted to be cutting-edge in terms of the research I wanted to pursue, so for me there was naturally a part of me which is like this was my dream and I wanted to continue doing it here, but I wasn't fully sure as to where things would end up.

So, you know, I didn't think too far ahead.

When you started at Google, it's just 2004, Google was a completely different company.

I mean, it was a fraction of what it is now, obviously growing and becoming more influential, but still tiny compared to what it is now.

I mean you were involved in some of the biggest Product rollouts and I mean Google Chrome right Google Drive.

things that are now almost indispensable for so many people How did you kind of see your place in the company, you know, at that time?

I mean, did it feel like you were part of something really big?

Was it hard to have that kind of perspective?

Definitely, Google felt like a special place.

I got exposure to the founders early on and very clearly talking to them.

You had a sense they were very, I would call, unique thinkers.

As a pair of them, They would always come at problems with a very, very different viewpoint.

They were very ambitious in everything they set out to do.

And at Google, at any given time, there were a lot of projects.

And so you had a sense that this was different, but at the same time, I always sensed the power of the internet.

And so I realized for the first time you're going to have a technology which is really going to touch billions of people.

And over time, can I really be accessible to more people than prior versions of computing and technology?

So you know, you had the sense that this was going to be something really big and you were part of, I'm talking about the internet now, and you were part of a bigger movement too.

So a combination of all that made it feel pretty unique.

Did you see yourself at that time as a leader, or did you have ambitions to be a leader, or were you more focused on being a product guy and focusing on the technical side and just sort of being a good employee?

You know, I definitely was focused on rolling up my sleeves, building products and shipping them and just the thrill of trying to build something and put it out and see how users respond to it and do they adopt it.

And so for me, a lot of it was about that craft, if you will.

And so that's what I was focused on, love the company.

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Sundar shares how he eventually did start thinking about leadership and what he's focused on as the CEO of Google today.

You're listening to How I Built This Lab.

And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen.

Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles.

After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance, But the road to success is a rocky 1.

Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Ru off course.

In our series, RuPaul Born Naked, we'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as 1 of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere.

Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab.

I'm Guy Raz and I'm talking with Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

Sundar, at what point did you start to see yourself as somebody who could be the CEO of Google and Alphabet.

I mean, based on your description of your early days, that would never have crossed your mind.

But at some point, you must have at least mentally had to become prepared to do that.

Do you remember what enabled you to prepare to actually see yourself in that role?

I think there was some point at which Larry Page, who was the CEO at the time and 1 of our co-founders, asked me to manage our entire product portfolio, so to be the head of products in a technology company, in a product-focused company like Google, it is the essence of the job.

And so in some ways, when I started working on it, I naturally felt the accountability for the company, if you will.

So not that I thought of myself as a CEO, but the natural role demanded you end-to-end think about everything.

And so I actually started working that way.

But I never thought much about being a CEO as much as, given I loved building products, the chance to do it at scale and to build products for the entire company was more than what I wanted and would have been happy doing that part.

But I think that's probably was the beginning of the transition and when both Larry and I started thinking about it.

When you joined Google in 2004, it was just a few years after Jack Welch retired from GE, and he was like the sort of iconic CEO who sort of represented in the minds of people what a CEO should be, sort of fist-pounding the table, and that's been reassessed now, and it's definitely not a model I think a lot of CEOs would adopt, but you had and have a reputation for being a quiet leader.

Before I get to that, I want to understand how you kind of learned to become a leader, because you are running a company that's much bigger than GE ever was today, and much bigger than what Jack Welch had to do.

And you had to become that person over time.

So tell me, when you started to think of yourself as a leader?

You know, 1 of my mentors was someone called Bill Campbell.

He was a football coach at Columbia and later mentored a lot of CEOs.

And he had this famous saying, I may quote it wrongly now, but it's basically, you don't become a leader of people, it's your people who make you a leader.

So I didn't focus much on how I'm going to be a leader as much as whatever I was doing, was fully committed to making it successful, including the people who work for me.

So always approach it as trying to help make what we are working on be more successful, including particularly the people I worked with.

So being really vested in their success and their outcomes and going the distance to do that.

And so I guess that's the process by which it unfolded.

And so maybe somewhere along the line, I realized I was making this transition, but it was more natural for me.

And the second thing was I realized being a leader also allowed you to scale and work on more than 1 problem at a time.

And so that appealed a lot to me as well.

So it's probably a combination of both of those things.

I wanna focus on what was kind of your North Star, I guess, or really a central focus of your ambitions for Google, and that's artificial intelligence.

You know, we've been hearing about artificial intelligence for a long time.

It goes back to Alan Turing in World War II and before.

And even over the past 10 years, anybody who's seen TED Talks or you know, you hear about, oh, AI is going to change medicine, AI is going to change the way we consume energy, and AI is going to solve climate change, it's going to make government smarter, more efficient.

And I'm talking about things I heard 8, 9 years ago.

Tell me where you see now glimmers of light coming through that are within grasp.

Because I know Google is investing so much money into this technology, and it encompasses so many different things.

So give me sort of the 35, 000-foot view of what AI will do.

Poonam Look, I always thought the company should be, and that's how the founders said it, should be focused on deep computer science and technology to help solve problems.

And AI just happens to be 1 of the most important technological advances.

When I look at the journey, 1 of the great things about AI is, In some ways, it's an abstract concept.

And the more AI starts doing things, we take it for granted.

And so it bakes into the system and the expectations keep shifting.

And we recently had an event called Google I.O.

Where as a company we talk about all the things we do.

Leading up to the event, I was reflecting on how AI is impacting all our products in countless ways.

If you're in Gmail and you're typing something and we give all these suggestions for you to complete or to send quick replies back that actually works on machine learning and AI.

We now translate across many, many languages and it is seamless.

In fact, now we are going deep and adding some of the rarer languages in the world, but very, very important for the people who speak it.

And the fact now you can seamlessly translate it into hundreds of languages is an example of progress.

If you use YouTube, you automatically generate chapters now based on a creator's video, and also show transcripts of the video to people.

So that's how AI kind of working and it's automatic and it just works.

If you're a small medium business and you come to Google and say, look, I want to grow my business, but I only have a few hundred dollars to spend.

You can go through the process and custom design and create everything, or you can give your budget and our AI systems can optimize and run a campaign for you.

We are mapping buildings in Africa, and these are hard to do.

And we're using AI to really scale up the number of buildings we are mapping.

We are sharing the data with the World Bank and the United Nations to use for nonprofit purposes.

It's obviously a very regulated industry, rightfully so, and things take time.

But just the fact that AI system will help triage images for radiologists to scan and maybe reprioritize them in the right order, I see companies beginning to do that.

And something we will take for granted 10 years from now is how it'll all work.

And so you see the progress, and it's baked into our products.

So if you talk to Google and ask a question and we give you an answer back, there's a lot of AI underneath all those layers.

And I think you'll see it more in the fabric of what we do every day in countless things.

In the future, do you see AI being a greater source of revenue for a company like Google over, say, advertising?

You know, As I became CEO, I wanted the company to think of its technology approach as AI first is because I see that long-term opportunity.

And so when you look at our business, for example, like Google Cloud, through which we are offering technology to other companies, we will give them AI capabilities as well.

So I think that'll be a big business opportunity.

But above all, I think AI is a foundational technology which equally will make search better, to maybe 1 day make self-driving cars work safer and much better.

I think these are 2 different dimensions.

How we make money over time will be different than the fact that AI will power a lot of what we do as a company, but it will help us both diversify and create new businesses.

And that's part of our long-term view on it, which is why I'm excited about both the amount of work we do there, but also the fact that we lead the way in many of the foundational areas there.

You know, I wonder about the ethical side of this, because the question is, if you could take Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey 15 years ago and say, this is 1 of the things that could happen with this amazing thing that you're about to put into the world.

What do you want to do now to prevent those things from happening?

Now, Google, the most powerful company in the world, or 1 of 2 or 3, has that opportunity to ask those questions, knowing what we know about the promise and peril of technology that we use today.

So help me understand how you think about that and how you can preempt and anticipate the downsides, the sort of the darker parts of AI?

Because it is also potentially an inevitable result.

And obviously, technology always has dual use and a lot of our journey is all about harnessing technology to benefit society.

What gives me great comfort is if anything, I think for AI, from very early days, or at least for the past many years, people rightfully have worried about the consequences.

And so compared to many things, You mentioned the internet earlier.

I genuinely don't recall much conversations in the early days of the internet about some of the negative externalities that could come with it.

I think internet has been an extraordinary force for good, but as you mentioned, we've all had to learn, process, and work through some of the issues it creates as well.

AI, on the other hand, I think from its earliest days, I think people have recognized both how profound it can be, as well as the fact that you have to work extra hard to harness it.

And coming back to us, this is why very early, I think, compared to other areas of technology we have worked on, we both have articulated a clear set of AI principles publicly.

If you look at it compared to other foundational technologies, there is a lot of research which also goes into looking at ethical pillars of AI and how to make progress there.

And more importantly, not just at Google, but I think there are many, many places around the world, universities, nonprofits, over time, I mean, there needs to be laws and regulations.

So this is an area where I think we are, I'm optimistic that we are thinking about it earlier than we have typically done with other areas.

And so, I see that we are approaching it better overall, but there's a lot of work left ahead.

And also, for better or worse, because Google is such a powerful company, right?

Such a powerful global force, you can't help but not understand why people would hold you accountable to be responsible around this, right?

I think that we feel a deep sense of responsibility here and I think it is perfectly correct and right that there is a lot of accountability and we need to be accountable to society as well as we pursue this work.

We're going to be back in a moment with more from Sundar Pichai of Google and Alphabet.

My guest today is Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

Sundar, I can only begin to imagine how complex your world is.

I mean, in part because you have to be obviously careful about what you say, because it can move a stock and it can upset shareholders.

And I mean, you've got to do quarterly calls, all these parts of your job, in addition to overseeing all the technologies and so on.

But Google is seen as a leader, and people look at Google for lots of different things.

So let me ask you about 1 important 1, which is the future of work.

Tell me about how you're kind of thinking about that, because this is complicated.

See all How I Built This with Guy Raz transcripts on Applepodcasts

HIBT Lab! Google: Sundar Pichai