Alphabet Inc. chief executive Sundar Pichai acknowledged that today’s leading AI technologies can still make mistakes, urging people to use them in combination with other tools.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Pichai noted that AI can be valuable “if you want to creatively write something,” but emphasized that users must “learn to use these tools for what they’re good at, and not blindly trust everything they say.”
He told the BBC: "We take pride in the amount of work we put in to give us as accurate information as possible, but the current state-of-the-art AI technology is prone to some errors."
Asked whether Google would be immune to the impact of an AI bubble bursting, Pichai said: “I think no company is going to be immune, including us.”
He added: “We can look back at the internet right now. There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound. I expect AI to be the same. So I think it’s both rational and there are elements of irrationality through a moment like this.”
His comments follow a warning from Jamie Dimon, the boss of US bank JP Morgan, who told the BBC last month that investment in AI would pay off, but some of the money poured into the industry would "probably be lost".
But Pichai said Google's unique model of owning its own "full stack" of technologies - from chips to YouTube data, to models and frontier science - meant it was in a better position to ride out any AI market turbulence.
AI will also affect work as we know it, Pichai said, calling it "the most profound technology" humankind had worked on.
"We will have to work through societal disruptions," he said, adding that it would also "create new opportunities".
"It will evolve and transition certain jobs, and people will need to adapt," he said. Those who do adapt to AI "will do better".
"It doesn't matter whether you want to be a teacher [or] a doctor. All those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools."