Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has shared advice for Indian engineers amid the AI era.
In a YouTube interview with content creator Varun Mayya, Pichai suggested young engineers understand technology more deeply.
Pichai responded to Mayya's opinion on cracking the FAANG interviews. A FAANG interview refers to the hiring and recruitment processes of the world's leading tech companies—Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google.
"I don’t know if you know this, but there is an entire industry in India built to help young Indians crack the FAANG interviews," Mayya said.
He added that despite being "smart", many students fail to focus on the fundamentals.
Mayya then asked Pichai to share advise for budding software engineers on how to prepare for the future.
Citing Aamir Khan's film 3 Idiots, Pichai said, "Real success comes from understanding things in a deeper way".
Pichai used the iconic motor scene from Aamir Khan’s film 3 Idiots to explain the difference between knowing something and understanding it.
Earlier this week, Google announced that it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries.
"I'm excited to announce that we will begin launching this fully revamped experience, 'AI overviews,' to everyone in the US this week," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said.
The change will soon spread to other countries, he added, making it accessible to more than a billion people.
The AI blurbs generated by Google's Gemini technology will offer succinct summaries of what it found on the internet with links to the online sources that supplied the information.
The change comes as Google feels growing pressure from AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, and from the repeated rumors that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.
Searches through AI chats have also appeared on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with users able to get information from the web without Google.
Creators and small publishers are nervous about the change, fearing users will no longer click through to websites to find information.
Research firm Gartner predicts traffic to the web from search engines will fall 25 percent by 2026 because of AI bot use.
Google also provided a look at Project Astra, which is devoted to building digital assistants to aid with tasks big or small.
The tech giant is in a fierce AI race with rivals including OpenAI, which released a GPT-4o version of its flagship software on Monday.
GPT-4o can generate content or understand commands in voice, text, or images.
OpenAI's update to its technology proved to be extremely conversational -- able to crack jokes, write songs, and help tutor a student in algebra.
