Weekend Listen: Google’s James Manyika on AI Risk

Mishal Husain (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

James Manyika (0:11)

The dangers have always been real. Anytime you're talking about powerful technologies, we're all accountable. The race that I think we're in, we want to be in, is the race to get it right.

Mishal Husain (0:21)

James Manyika of Google, one of today's big players in AI. And when you do hear AI could kill us all, do you hear that kind of thing and think this is alarmist nonsense?

James Manyika (0:34)

If you said the possibility was 0.1%, I still want to take that seriously. In this case, there's a weighing. It's quite possible that current misunderstanding and sentiments could actually get in the way of pursuing all those extraordinary things that would benefit humanity and society.

Mishal Husain (0:52)

From Bloomberg Weekend, this is the Mishal Husain Show. I'm Mishal Husain.

It feels to me as if the past couple of weeks represent a moment when AI cut through to a general mainstream audience. When people who might never have tapped a question into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Kimi for that matter, suddenly began to wonder what this technology is all about, what it can do, how far it can go. When three of the most powerful people within AI, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk, themselves questioned whether the technology was progressing too fast to be safe, there was a natural pivot towards questions for powerful people in government. What are you doing to make sure it develops in the right way? Well, President Trump has now gathered the top tech leaders at the White House and said in effect, it's up to them, not him. Essentially, he wants American players to be head of Chinese ones, so the companies he said should self-regulate. In this episode, we have a chance to go inside the world of AI with James Manyika, who is a top executive at Google. He's responsible for their work on technology and society, and Google is a big player. It has Gemini AI, which you might well have seen at the top of a Google search, and also because of its work across products with Android phone operating software, it's able to embed AI in different ways, putting an answer from Gemini into Google Maps, for example. James himself has a fascinating background growing up in Barbway when it was still Rhodesia, and then going to Oxford University on a scholarship named for Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist founder of Rhodesia. He's risen far in his career right to the top of Google, and at times in this conversation, you'll hear him choose his words carefully. Not surprising really, because where it's such an interesting and pivotal moment in how comfortable we are with AI and its capabilities and how we view it. As ever, my written notes are a place where you can find the context beyond this conversation. They are at bloomberg.com/mishal.

We can dive into this exactly where James and I began when we met in New York.

James, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. I'm a busy man with a wide swathe of responsibilities, including being one of the directors of the new DeepMind Institute.

James Manyika (3:36)

Well, thank you very much for having me.

Mishal Husain (3:38)

You know, I know that we are going to talk really broadly across the landscape and what you see when you look at AI capability and potential. You're passionate about science, I know, as well as other areas. But I really want to talk about the here and now, first of all, because we are talking at a moment when there's more and more talk and more and more fear in many ways about the risks as well as the capabilities of AI.

And as you watch those comments and listen to that debate, what do you think? Is it possible that AI is advancing too fast to be safe?

James Manyika (4:14)

I think it's quite remarkable, the incredible progress that AI is making in the last few years. And it's quite remarkable. I could never have imagined this when I was doing my PhD many years ago.

It's important that anytime you have a powerful technology that presents the possibility of all these extraordinary things we can do with it in science and the economy and so forth, it's also worth taking seriously the risks and the complexities of it. And I think part of what you're referring to is the, yes, some of the concerns and anxieties that I think are quite well founded in many respects, but I think it's worth taking those seriously too, along with the possibilities that we're all excited about.

Mishal Husain (4:52)