The AI opportunity in 2024…and beyond

It’s been quite the year. As we said at the start of the year, AI hit its stride. With our latest announcement, Gemini, our largest and most capable AI model, we’re seeing the first hints of what magic looks like in practice. 

What a time to be working in technology! With the AI revolution front of mind, here are three areas we’ll be focused on next year:

#1: Making AI more helpful for everyone

As I’ve written, sharing AI’s benefits widely means bringing more people into the conversation to look not only at the harms to avoid, but also the opportunities to seize. 

AI gives us a once-in-a-generation chance to accelerate human progress, usher in new waves of innovation and economic progress, and tangibly improve the lives of people everywhere. 

The testing question remains how to seize that opportunity boldly and responsibly?  

To spur that work, in September we launched the Digital Futures Project to support researchers, organize convenings, and foster debate on public policy solutions to encourage the responsible development of AI. We want to help academics, civil society, and people from across industries step up to share ideas, ask questions, and identify blind spots. 

In 2024, look for more updates from us in this space as we expand on our work with leading think tanks, civil society organizations, and academic institutions, on both national and international levels.

#2: Furthering aligned, pro-innovation AI governance frameworks

We’ve long said AI is too important not to be regulated and too important not to be regulated well. 

Governments recognize the need for shared guardrails to address potential risks and maximize potential progress.

Examples include everything from the G7’s new international code of conduct for responsible AI to the United Nations AI Advisory Body, to the Biden Administration’s Executive Order, and Europe’s AI Act. 

If you squint, you can see the emerging outlines of an international framework for responsible AI innovation. No one wants a fractured regulatory environment that delays access to important products, makes life harder for start-ups, slows the global development of powerful new technologies, and undermines responsible AI development. 

We’ll keep urging government leaders and regulators to be intentional about their digital strategies and to keep asking how we can maximize productivity, competitiveness, and social value. 

We look forward to contributing to frameworks that strike the right balances between security and openness, data access and privacy, explainability and accuracy, and more.

#3: Improving cybersecurity with and for AI

Security has always been at the core of our products, and we’ve protected people, businesses and governments by sharing our expertise and the latest cybersecurity tools and resources. This work became increasingly urgent this year.

That’s why this summer we introduced the Secure AI Framework (SAIF), a conceptual approach to collaboratively securing AI technology.

And it’s why we’ve been making brick-and-mortar investments in cybersecurity around the world in the form of Google Safety Engineering Centers.

Our latest Center, GSEC Málaga (which opened last month) is a great example. GSEC Málaga will serve as a European hub for pooling threat intelligence, analyzing new attacks, and sharing  cybersecurity insights and best practices with policymakers, cybersecurity experts, academic leaders, and customers. 

We’ll be using AI to help identify malicious code faster, with more accuracy, and more accessibly compared to traditional tools alone. This year we’ll be using AI to give defenders the advantage, helping them mitigate threats, evaluate online information, and build a safer and more reliable information ecosystem.

Blazing new trails 

While we said as early as 2016 that we were an “AI-first company,” 2023 was a watershed year.

In the words of our CEO Sundar Pichai, we’re focused not only on ensuring that this technology is available to all, but also on “developing it in ways that ensure people everywhere have access to it and can engage in the conversation about how we should adapt it.”

We owe it to each other to get this right–through global, pro-innovation frameworks, and through affirmative policy agendas that maximize opportunity, responsibility, and security. 

In 2024, we look forward to keeping the momentum going and working together with others to take advantage of AI’s potential for economic and scientific progress.