"I can't imagine a better time to be a computer scientist, and I feel super lucky to be able to see the details of how these things work," said Sergey Brin, 51, who co-founded Google in 1998 with his friend Larry Page.
"With this AI boom… being a computer scientist, like, I want to be a part of that. It's just so exciting. And yeah, it's a treat."
Making a surprise appearance at Google's annual developers' conference on Tuesday, Brin, who stepped down from Google in 2019, returned to the company a year ago as an advisor following a security breach involving ChatGPT and artificial intelligence.
Brin seemed well and truly excited about recent advancements in AI technology, which he cites as the reason for his return to Google after retirement. According to him, the most impressive part of Google's new Gemini 1.5 Pro model that was unveiled on Tuesday is its inclusiveness – from the ability to summarize multiple Gmail messages to software encoding.
The latter is the "No. 1" use of AI today in Brin's view. "It wasn't completely flawless," he said, referring to using AI for coding. "But [there were] a couple of minor issues that I'd cleaned up right away. That was pretty amazing."
Brin said that though he'd already retired, the AI boom compelled him to get back in the saddle and hop on the bandwagon, learning a lot from the young engineers paving a new, revolutionary path in technology.
Exactly 12 years ago, Brin led the demonstration of Google Glass at the Google I/O developers' conference – the company's smart glasses, which were ahead of their time. Google unveiled On Tuesday its new artificial intelligence project Astra in a video featuring similar experimental glasses that can capture or record objects and use AI to identify them.
"It's the killer app, 10 years later. The perfect software - but we messed up the timing," he said. "Hands-free is the idea. A lot of things you want commentary on, like cooking, doing some, sports. It's awkward if you do it with your hands holding a phone. So the prototype was pretty cool for that. I wished I timed it a little bit better.
"In my own life? I do stuff on the household things like how do I try to make an Espresso drink or stuff like that. Honestly, I also really like it when I screen a computer screen to it."
When asked if he plans to make a comeback, Brin replied, "We'll have to think about it."