Electricity Can't Hold a Candle to Artificial Intelligence in Significance, Says Alphabet CEO

Google's chief executive officer has left no doubt about how important he thinks artificial intelligence will be to humanity. "AI is one of the most profound things we're working on as humanity. It's more profound than fire or electricity," Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. Alphabet, which owns Google, has had to grapple with its role in the development of AI, including managing employee revolts against its work on the technology for the U.S. government. In 2018, a group of influential software engineers successfully delayed the development of a security feature that would've helped the company win military contracts.