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Big Technology Podcast · 3 min · Oct 20, 2026

AI should adapt to people, but screens will still have a role

Sundar Pichai expects computing to adapt to people's routines through context, persistence and voice. Screens will still matter when people want to watch or consume AI-generated media.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai is CEO of Google and Alphabet.

  • Alex Kantrowitz, Host · Founder, Big Technology

    Former BuzzFeed News senior tech reporter and author of Always Day One.

About this segment

Sundar Pichai expects computing to adapt to people's routines through context, persistence and voice. Screens will still matter when people want to watch or consume AI-generated media.

From “Sundar Pichai: Path To Recursive Self-Improvement, Compute Allocation Dilemma, Future AI Interfaces”, Oct 20, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “What will AI look like in the next few years?” See all 35 answers

“with AI, it'll be the other way about. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day lives.”
Sundar Pichaiat 24:17 · Big Technology Podcast24:17

Takeaways

  1. AI should carry context and work persistently in the background.
  2. Voice input can handle conversational, imperfect requests.
  3. Screens remain useful for video and other media.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 15:04Google puts frontier AI compute ahead of other uses3:57
  2. 7:27Recursive self-improvement still involves human researchers5:37
  3. 29:56Google plans to bring persistent agents across its products4:05
  4. 1:03Argon usage reached 25 trillion tokens in 72 hours2:51
  5. 19:33Google plans compute around demand but accepts overbuild risk2:40

  6. 23:27AI should adapt to people, but screens will still have a role2:45

Up next · a16z PodcastAI is widening the gap between startups and incumbents6:55

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 23:33

    right? That's how I think about it. I wonder what you think the future of the interface looks like, the way that we use computing in the future as AI starts to roll out. I was speaking with Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, about this a couple of months ago. He had a very interesting quote he said what is the interface that you want what is the product that you want the answer is that you want no interface you want no product you want this to be What's the interface between you and me, basically saying, just talking, that if AI is that smart, there shouldn't be maybe a screen or just so many buttons and things that you have to touch.

  2. 24:08

    What is your view of what the interface looks like in the age of AI? The way I think about it is I do feel computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. with AI, it'll be the other way about. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day lives. So there's an aspect of it. You want that AI to be able to speak to it when you want it to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You're not dealing with a lot of complexity. It's natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn't mean it won't have an interface, however, to me. Look, today, for example, I mean, nowadays, I just, even in my phone, like, you know, Gemini voice models are so good, I can just press the microphone button.

  3. 25:11

    I can just ramble. That's why we call it rambler, right? I can ramble. It kind of intelligently corrects with my personal context. So even my friends' names, like weird names, it kind of gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It's amazing. I'm not going and backspace editing once I finish saying it, right? It's remarkable how good it's gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video, like, you know, so you may ask your AI to create something and you want to watch it, consume it, right? So I think the way I think about it is you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is, the technology is adapting to how you're working at any given moment in time.

  4. 26:02

    Yeah. I'm just going to play the OpenAI hits because, you know, last year you sent them into