AI 'vastly more transformative' than web, mobile: Google co-founder Sergey Brin

Brin returned to Google in 2023 to focus on AI development after stepping away from his leadership role in 2019. His comeback followed the rapid rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT that kicked off an industry -wide AI arms race.

When asked about what he does day-to-day at the company now, Brin joked "I torture people like Demis (Hassabis). It was amazing, he tolerated me crashing this fireside"

"I'm across the street pretty much every day and they're just people who are working on the key Gemini text models, on the pre-training, on the post-training" he said.

Brin said he periodically also delves into some of the company's multimodal efforts like the recently launched video generation model Veo 3.

"I tend to be pretty deep in the technical details and that's a luxury I really enjoy, fortunately, because guys like Demis are minding the shop. My scientific interest is deep in the algorithms and how they can evolve," he said.

Lessons from Google Glass flop

During the session, Brin also spoke frankly about lessons he learnt from the failure of Google Glass nearly a decade ago, as the tech giant re-enters the smart glasses market.

"I learned a lot. I made a lot of mistakes with Google Glass, I'll be honest. I am still a big believer in the form factor, so I'm glad that we have it now. It looks like normal glasses now, and doesn't have the thing in the front (like in Google Glass)," he said.

Brin mentioned he didn't know anything about consumer electronic supply chains, and how hard it would be to build that and have it at a reasonable price point, managing all the manufacturing and so forth. "This time we have great partners that are helping us build this. So that's another step forward"

He also attributed it to a 'technology gap'. "Now, in the AI world, the things that these glasses can do to help you out without constantly distracting you, that capability is much higher," he said.

Google announced on May 21 that it is partnering with eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to develop AI-powered glasses based on Android XR, a mixed-reality operating system for headsets and smart glasses with built-in Gemini.

The company is also expanding its partnership with Samsung to extend Android XR to glasses. Together, both the companies will be creating a software and reference hardware platform that will enable the ecosystem to make glasses, Google stated. Developers will be able to start building for this platform later this year.