What Google CEO Sundar Pichai told meReporter Robert White recently travelled to sunny California for Google’s annual flagship AI event. This is what their CEO Sundar Pichai told him.Robert White in Silicon Valley4 min readJune 13, 2026 - 3:13PMCOMMENTGoogle recently flew hundreds of journalists, YouTubers and creators from around the world into Mountain View, California for its annual developer conference. There were reporters from CNN and The New York Times, and one YouTuber in our group from India had 4.5 million subscribers.I was one of two Aussies who attended the event, along with tech creator Adam Stewart (I highly recommend checking his stuff out).They flew me halfway around the world – business class, thank you Google – put me up in a nice hotel and gave me access to some of the most brilliant minds in AI, and indeed the world at large. Over the course of my visit, I had one recurring question on my mind: Why was I there?Others you may likenewsnewsI’m no closer to an answer on that one.When I asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai why the company went to such trouble to bring journalists and creators from every corner of the world to California to cover the event, spending millions in the process, he answered: “We put so much effort into Google IO because it’s our one chance to tell that end-to-end vision across everything we are doing”.Google CEO Sundar Pichai walks on stage. Picture: Robert White/news.com.au“We really try hard to communicate where the state of the technology is; what is it that we are trying to accomplish in the year ahead.“Obviously, we are a global company. We spoke about how we are fortunate and privileged to have 13 products which touch a billion users each. Five products and platforms which touch three billion users (each) around the world.“I wish physically we can be everywhere in the world at the same place. We’re working on that with our quantum computers, but until that is solved, this is the best way we can think about doing that. So thank you for coming and spending time with us and helping give your analysis to the rest of the world.”Good answer. I knew there was a reason he earns the big bucks.Over the course of the conference, the message that kept being impressed on me was the profoundness of Google’s work in the AI space.Well, mission successful on that front.During the last few minutes of the initial keynote address – the flagship event of the days-long conference where the biggest announcements were made for the coming year – DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis told the world: “I’ve always believed the number one application of AI should be to improve human health”. Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, speaks at a Google I/O event in California. Picture: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu“With the goal of one day, solving all disease. Something that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago,” he said. “Solving all disease …”It might be tempting to take a comment like that – about an hour and a half into the presentation – as a kind of throwaway line to show some altruistic vision to balance out the business side of things.That is until you remember that Mr Hassabis was awarded the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry for developing the AlphaFold AI model, which is able to accurately predict the complex 3D structures of proteins – solving the 50-year-old “protein folding” grand challenge in biology.At the Google Startup event I attended six months ago in Sydney, the applications AI were being used for were mind-blowing.One of the start-ups, Brisbane-based Gelomics, was using AI to assist pharmaceutical companies in growing human tissues that “look, behave, and react to drug treatment just like real human organs”, with the ultimate goal of replacing the mice and cell cultures that currently dominate drug development with AI-grown human tissues – potentially saving lives, money and millions of animals.AI-generated image of Google IO conference in California. Picture: OpenArt AIAnd yet, much of what was on display at the California conference could be called the “more fun” uses of AI; adding an effect to a photo to make it claymation or change the background so that it’s underwater or in a volcano, make a video in five seconds with a quick prompt like “monkey riding a bike” – what many might call AI slop*.This is the tension at the heart of AI.For every deeply stupid use of the technology, there is also a genuinely transformative one sitting adjacent to it.The same systems generating uncanny cartoon avatars may also help model protein structures, predict extreme weather events or accelerate medical breakthroughs. The same technology producing synthetic slop may eventually save millions of lives.At one off-the-record drinks event attended by journalists and senior Google executives, I noticed small groups slowly beginning to form around certain figures in the room. Journalists and creators drifted around the executives like moths to a flame, warming up to their genius. These are the minds that will go down in history as 21st century Oppenheimers.Time Magazine announced the Architects of AI as the 2025 Time Person of the Year. Demis Hassabis is among those pictured. Picture: Time Person of the Year/AFPDemis Hassabis is an AI ‘celebrity’. It feels strange to call them celebrities, as most people on the street wouldn’t recognise them. But inside Silicon Valley, they possess something arguably more valuable: proximity to the future.The hotel we were staying at in Silicon Valley was opposite Stanford University, and fresh from my flight and laden with the novelty of the situation I’d found myself in, I went for a wander around the campus which is the alma mater of Google CEO Sundar Pichai.The quad was bustling with energy and I asked the first student I stopped, a young spotty man with straight black hair, what he thought of Google.“Why do you think I’m studying here?” he answered.For the avoidance of doubt, what I saw during the week cemented my belief that Google is probably the most ethical of the major AI companies (for what that’s worth). Google founders Sergey Brin (left) and Larry Page created the search engine as Stanford University students some 28 years ago.However, this doesn’t exempt it from tough questions or scrutiny – it actually makes it the first point of call. Because companies with this much power – companies shaping how billions of people interact with information, knowledge and, increasingly, reality itself – do not just build products. They shape how people think.Before I travelled to California, I spoke to a friend who works in tech and is much smarter than I am. I was trying to better understand the world I was walking into.More CoverageGoogle CEO’s AI vision for futureRobert White in Silicon ValleyGoogle announces huge wave of changesRobert White in Silicon ValleyAt the end of the conversation, he told me there was really only one question we should be asking about companies like Google.How are these firms – which you and I have likely never paid a cent to in our lives – among the biggest and most influential in the world?Maybe try Googling it.Read related topics:GoogleJoin the conversationAdd your comment to this storyTo join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? 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