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Mideast & North Africa

World Governments Summit in Dubai: The Next Frontier of AI

13 Feb, 2025

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Google MENA Blog Team

Yesterday, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, held a virtual fireside chat with His Excellency Omar Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for AI, Digital Economy & Remote Work, at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, an annual meeting that brings together heads of state and leaders in business and government.

Sundar talked about the company's AI-first approach and its long-term investments in foundational technologies like Quantum computing and Waymo.

Google is building applications that make AI truly helpful to people everywhere - seven products that reach more than 2 billion users — like Maps, Search and Android, are all powered by our AI innovations, and our most recent Gemini models. Excerpts from the fireside chat below.

Image showing Sundar Pichai wear a navy suit jacket and white shirt on a large screen sitting at a table and behind him is a colourful G logo. On the bottom right of the screen you can see H.E Omar Al Olama wearing a white Kundoora (traditional Emirati attire)
  • "I think it's a combination of things. Our founders really set a very ambitious framework for the company...You have to have an optimistic culture, a culture of curiosity."
  • “In 2015, when I became CEO, I said the company is going to be AI first, and we decided to take a full-stack approach to AI. We started building our tensor processing units in 2017. When you make these long-term technology bets, AI, Waymo, Quantum, those you know, it will eventually happen. At that foundational layer, you take a long-term view and you don't waver at all. At the application layer, you are right. When you take efforts to build products, you're going to have some successes and some things won't work out. There's judgment there as to when you keep pushing through and at what point do you see it's not getting traction, your approach is wrong, and you have to course correct. We don't always get it right, but it's important to go through that reading process too. That's what keeps the company fresh, and you're constantly pushing to do new things.”
  • "When you make these long-term technology bets, AI, Waymo, Quantum, those you know, it will eventually happen. At that foundational layer, you take a long-term view and you don't waver at all."

  • "At this moment, I'm spending a lot of my time on AI. The rate of progress, how profound the technology is...You've rarely seen a technology which is progressing so fast."

Watch the full discussion here.

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