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You might think that given his position as CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai must be constantly surrounded by not only the latest cool technology but all the best of the company’s prototypes.
However, the tech boss has revealed that he likes to “keep his prototypes at work and keep tech simple at home”, and doesn’t even have a Google Home voice assistant in the Pichai household yet.
Pichai was speaking at Code Conference in the US, and also hinted at plans to improve the company’s line of Nexus phones in the future.
The CEO also spoke extensively on the subject of artificial intelligence, and how Google compared to the other big players in Silicon Valley and how they were using it – namely Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.
When asked why he thought Google was doing better with AI, Pichai said: “First of all we’ve been doing it for a lot longer. So when I look at the scale at which we do it today, either at the raw power you apply to it, how many years we’ve been doing it or if you benchmark it in terms of any quality metrics.
“So if you take any kind of conversations you have with Google – our ability to answer questions at scale, globally, in-depth or start a follow-on conversation, those are the areas where the differences really show through.”
Google Now is the company’s digital virtual assistant, though at their developer conference last month, the firm unveiled a major upgrade called Google Assistant that would be embedded into Google software – including the Google Home speaker – and is able to better understand context and offer better dynamic recommendations when asked.
Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana aim to provide a similar service, and Amazon has its own voice-powered home assistant in the form of Echo. Facebook has also begun to use machine learning and artificial intelligence in its Messenger service to help users interact directly with businesses.
