⚡ [AIE CODE Preview] Inside Google Labs: Building The Gemini Coding Agent — Jed Borovik, Jules

**Jules** (0:04)
Okay, Jed Borovik, welcome to Latent Space.

**Jed Borovik** (0:07)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

**Jules** (0:08)
So we're sitting here at F.Ink's beautiful podcast studios, and we're actually meeting at GitHub Universe. How's it been so far?

**Jed Borovik** (0:15)
It's been great. I mean, yeah, the keynote today was awesome. It was fun to see Jules up there a little bit. We have a lot of folks from our team here. Jules is partnering with GitHub for the new Agent HQ step, which we're excited about. Also, this is an incredible podcast space. So yeah, I'm excited to do this here.

**Jules** (0:32)
I'm glad for them to loan us this space. You're also MC for AI Engineer Code. That's exciting in New York where you went to college, but you don't live there anymore.

**Jed Borovik** (0:42)
Yeah. I spent a bunch of time in New York. It's funny being part of the New York tech scene. I actually think it's great having big major conferences there. I think there's a lot, obviously, that happens on the West Coast, but being someone who tech on the East Coast, it's just awesome to have stuff there.

**Jules** (0:58)
You mentioned you fly over to SF a lot. What's the scene like in the East Coast?
Obviously, we are pretty new. This is our first year coming to New York. What else happens in the New York? What are the highlights for you in the New York tech scene?

**Jed Borovik** (1:13)
Yeah. There's so much. There's obviously a ton of great companies. I think the thing that's interesting about New York is it's such a big city with so much going on. Tech is a huge part of it, but there's also so many major industries there, whether it's... Sash and media, Sash and finance. It's always, I think, that helps push the tech and do all kinds of stuff. But yeah, the East Coast is a great city.
All the schools are all across the East Coast. A ton of great schools and great students doing all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I went to school there. The hackathon scene there was amazing. I really fell in love with tech and programming there.

**Jules** (1:49)
Is there a big NYU hackathon in Stanford with Calhacks and stuff?

**Jed Borovik** (1:55)
Yeah, so there's...

**Jules** (1:56)
What, Treehacks?

**Jed Borovik** (1:57)
Yeah, there's one that was put on by... This was a while ago, but we were put on by NYU in Columbia. We were due to get a Hack and Why. So there's a bunch of events that we did together. It would bring people across New York City, students across New York City. Those were super fun.
It would be at the Columbia one time and then NYU the next and it would cycle back and forth. So a lot of cool stuff was made there.

**Jules** (2:18)
Nice. So you've been at Google for a while, nine years. You worked on a bunch of things, including with Malta, which is also another guest that I'm interviewing today. How do you get into Jules? Like, what's the AI journey?

**Jed Borovik** (2:30)
Yeah, so this is going to sound really cheesy, but I've told this story a couple of times to folks when they're like, oh, how did you end up doing this? But it is actually very true. So I worked on Search for a long time.
And specifically kind of like news and freshness. And then, you know, when Stable Diffusion came out, that to me was the first, like, gen-ai moment. I know some people talk about, like, ChatGPT is like the first thing. But for me, Stable Diffusion, you know, it was a couple of months before ChatGPT came out. It was a huge thing. I was falling in a ton online. And there were two groups of creators having reactions to it. You know, there was one group that was, you know, this is stealing my art. This is stealing everything that's near and dear to me. I hate this. This is ruining my life. And there was another group of artists and creators who were like, this is a tool to create better art. So I was watching it.

**Jules** (3:16)
It's a new brush.

**Jed Borovik** (3:17)
Yeah, exactly. And right around then, I was having conversations with a couple of people who would say things like, you know, if I had a kid in college, I wouldn't recommend they study computer science. I was like, well, why? And this was long before, like, Jensen Huang and people, like, had been saying this kind of stuff. I was like, well, why? And it was like, oh, AI, like software engineers are going to change, it's going to be so, you know, who knows if there are going to be jobs. And I was like, I love being a software engineer. I love programming. Like, and I was like, wait, this is my stable diffusion moment. This is either it's going to take my art, my craft, this is a tool to create better art. And I was like, I definitely know which path I'm taking. So I got very into to building coding. So I was still working on search. But I spent a bunch of time making stuff for my own time, and playing with things.