Sergey Brin returns to Google, calls on retired computer scientists to join the AI revolution

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, once thought to be in retirement after stepping back from Alphabet in 2019, is now a regular fixture at the company’s headquarters, deeply involved in its latest artificial intelligence initiatives. His message for his peers is clear: there’s never been a more important moment for computer scientists to get back in the game.

Speaking alongside Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis at the Google I/O developer conference this week, Brin told Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz, “Honestly, anybody who’s a computer scientist should not be retired right now.” Brin explained he’s “pretty much at Google every day now” to work on Gemini, the company’s generative AI assistant and a flagship project from DeepMind, Alphabet’s renowned AI lab.

Brin’s return comes amid a fierce wave of innovation in AI, sparked in part by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in 2022. With tech giants in a heated competition to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)—machines capable of performing human-level tasks—Brin says the moment demands all hands on deck. “There’s just never been a greater, sort of, problem and opportunity — greater cusp of technology,” he said, emphasising that the pace and stakes of AI development outstrip even the internet’s earliest days.

Still, the competitive race for AGI is very much on Brin’s mind. “We fully intend that Gemini will be the very first AGI,” he declared, underscoring Google’s ambitions to lead the next wave of technological transformation.

Brin’s own “retirement” years were hardly idle; he invested in an airship startup (LTA Research), funded research into Parkinson’s disease, and ventured into real estate. But now, with AI promising a seismic shift in society and industry, Brin says there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.