Google’s biggest bet is AI for search, says Investment Chief
Alphabet, Google’s parent company that pioneered self-driving cars and quantum computing, is taking its biggest gamble much closer to home: online search.
Applying the artificial intelligence to the search industry that made Google a household name remains the company’s biggest challenge, Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet, said Tuesday at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York.
“We meet people where they want to be next,” Porat said in an interview with Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni.
Alphabet, which gets much of its more than $300 billion (roughly Rs. 25,45,814 crore) in annual revenue from search-related advertising, has injected AI-generated overviews into questions without clear answers, in one example of its efforts.
The move followed competition from ChatGPT maker OpenAI and required Google to navigate tricky territory, in which AI sometimes fabricates information into so-called “hallucinations.”
Search will continue to evolve, says Porat, who was previously the longest-serving chief financial officer of Google and Alphabet. Google Cloud is another important investment, she said.
Diagnosed with breast cancer twice, Porat also pointed to Alphabet’s numerous efforts to improve healthcare.
She mentioned the groundbreaking development of ‘AlphaFold’, an AI system that predicts the folds of proteins that the company applies to drug discovery through its Isomorphic Labs division. She said AI could safeguard vision for people at risk of losing it and free medical professionals from their screens so they can focus on care.
“It can restore humanity to the doctor-patient relationship,” she said, citing her own doctor’s hopes.
Asked whether the cost of Alphabet’s investments in AI would follow skyrocketing industry trends, Porat said the technology represented a “generational opportunity.” The company is on track to spend $50 billion on chips, data centers and other capital expenditures by 2024, analysts have said. But Alphabet based its bets on results.
“We need to generate returns,” she said.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
