Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued an internal memo on January 17, outlining the company’s need for job cuts in 2024 to achieve its ambitious objectives, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The memo, titled “2024 priorities and the year ahead” and reported by the Verge and CNBC, highlighted Pichai’s acknowledgment of the company’s significant goals and the necessity of investing in key priorities for the year.
Pichai emphasized that realizing these goals requires making difficult decisions, including the reduction of certain roles and streamlining organizational layers to enhance execution efficiency and speed. He reassured, however, that the scale of layoffs in 2024 would not be as extensive as the previous year and would not impact every team. Some teams will continue to assess and make decisions regarding resource allocation.
In January 2023, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced a 6% global workforce reduction. By September 2023, this translated to laying off 182,381 employees worldwide. AI remains a key investment area for Google in 2024, with plans to unveil specific goals for the company later in the week.
December 2023 saw Google release Gemini, its most advanced model at the time, which was initially touted as a potential “GPT-4 killer.” This was in reference to its supposed capability to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 model, which dominates the current market. However, Gemini received mixed reactions upon release, with some users criticizing its promotional video for allegedly overstating the model’s capabilities. Google responded by stating that certain promotional content was edited for conciseness.
Following this, Google reduced the pricing for Gemini’s professional version and announced plans to make its tools more widely accessible to developers. This move aims to enable developers to create their own AI models, mirroring ChatGPT’s feature that allows premium users to develop personalized GPT models.
Get $200 Free Bitcoins every hour! No Deposit No Credit Card required. Sign Up