Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is currently the highest paid Indian CEO in the world with an annual salary package of more than Rs 1800 crore. Sundar Pichai, who graduated from IIT, has been leading Google for a while now, but according to a market veteran, his reign is about to come to an end.
As the world is rapidly adapting artificial intelligence (AI) and all the tech giants are racing to improvise their AI tools, an expert believes Google’s AI platform Gemini may become the reason behind Pichai’s exit. Samir Arora, founder of Helios Capital, believes that Sundar Pichai will either be fired or resign after Google’s AI platform Gemini fiasco.
The comment from Samir Arora came as a reply to an X user who claimed that Google’s Gemini is refusing to acknowledge the existence of white people. “My guess is he will be fired or resign- as he should. After being in the lead on AI, he has completely failed on this and let others take over. Arora wrote in reply to X users.
For those who are unaware, Google is in a mess over inaccuracies in its AI-generated historical images. In a recent blog post, Prabhakar Raghavan, the Senior Vice President at Google, acknowledged that this feature was not up to par.
“Some of the images generated are inaccurate or even offensive. We’re grateful for users’ feedback and are sorry the feature didn’t work well,” Raghavan said.
“In short, two things. First, our tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range,” explained Raghavan.
And second, over time, the model became much more cautious than we intended and refused to answer certain prompts entirely. We wrongly interpreted some very anodyne prompts as sensitive.
What is Gemini AI?
Gemini is the most recent AI chatbot from Google, previously known as Bard. The tech conglomerate unveiled this artificial intelligence (AI) tool, which allows users to interact with the Gemini Pro 1.0 model in over 40 languages across more than 230 countries and territories.
Gemini Advanced is included in the Google One AI Premium Plan and is priced at $19.99 per month, with an initial two-month trial period. Gemini’s integration into various Google applications, such as Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and more, will be expected for AI Premium Plan subscribers, as discussed in the recent Google blog post.
Google Gemini is facing controversy
Despite its ambitious roll-out. Google also issued an apology on February 23 addressing issues related to a flawed AI image-generator linked to Gemini. The company acknowledged instances where the tool would “overcompensate” for diversity, even when such actions were unwarranted.
Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president overseeing Google’s search engine and other businesses, acknowledged the missteps in a blog post, stating, ‘It’s clear that this feature missed the mark.’ The AI produced inaccurate and offensive images that he expressed regret for and thanked users for their feedback.
While Raghavan refrained from citing specific examples, social media platforms highlighted instances where the Gemini AI image generator depicted historically inaccurate portrayals, such as representing a Black woman as a United States founding father and depicting individuals of Black and Asian descent as Nazi-era German soldiers.
Raghavan defended the purpose of the chatbot’s features, stating that the objective was to cater to various requests. However, he admitted that certain prompts resulted in unintended “overcompensation.”
Despite the ongoing discussion about the implications of Gemini AI, Alphabet’s CEO’s fate is still uncertain amidst mounting criticism and public scrutiny.
India may face action over biased Google’s Gemini AI
According to reports, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) is contemplating sending a notice to Google concerning Gemini’s perceived “biased” response to a question regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Gemini faced criticism for allegedly displaying partiality against PM Modi, following a complaint by a user on social media platform X. The viral post highlights the AI model’s purported “bias” in response to queries about PM Modi, former US president Donald Trump, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The X user’s complaint was addressed by Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who stated that the platform’s actions violate IT regulations and other legal statutes. Chandrasekhar remarked, ‘These actions directly infringe on Rule 3(1)(b) of the Intermediary Rules (IT rules) of the IT Act and contravene several provisions of the Criminal Code.’ In his statement, he named both Google and the Meity, indicating that there may be additional steps needed to fix the problem.