While workers worry that AI will make their jobs obsolete, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has a different take.
In an unscripted fireside chat at Google DeepMind Build Day at AGI House, Brin pointed to games like Go and said human accomplishments continue to advance even after computers surpass humans in these areas.
“By the way, the game of Go has come a long way since AlphaGo,” Brin said. “The player who played against it, Mr. Lee Se-dol, became much better after that, and Mr. Ko Jie also became much better after playing against AlphaGo. It pushed the cutting edge of technology.”
Sedol was one of the world’s top Go players and a multi-time international champion when he won one of five matches against AlphaGo powered by Google DeepMind in March 2016. Jie was the No. 1 ranked Go player in the world when he played against AlphaGo in 2017 and lost all three matches.
Go is a two-player board game that originated in China and is usually played by placing black and white stones on a grid. The goal is to control more territory than your opponent and capture their stones.
“The fact that computers can do things well hasn’t actually stopped humans from getting better and better at computers, becoming more and more recognized, and enjoying them,” Brin said. “I think you’ll find that AI can do a lot of pretty amazing things, but I also think it can help advance human progress.”
Brin’s comments also come amid a broader debate about whether AI will replace or augment workers. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University found that 30% of Americans believe that AI could make their jobs obsolete.
While some executives point to AI as a factor in layoffs, many researchers and economists argue that evidence of widespread job losses due to AI remains limited. Instead, much of the discussion in Silicon Valley has shifted to how AI will change the nature of work, allowing people to focus more on judgment, creativity, and decision-making while machines handle routine tasks.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn, and former prominent Google engineer Kelsey Hightower recently said that soft skills such as empathy, communication, and relationship building cannot be replaced by AI.