At 1 pm on a Friday shortly before Christmas last year, Kent Walker, Google’s top lawyer, summoned four of his employees to discuss the safety of Google’s products. Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, had decided to ready a slate of products based on artificial intelligence (AI) — immediately. This was due to the release of ChatGPT, an AI program by OpenAI, which had captured the imagination of millions of people. Google was developing its own AI technology that did many of the same things, and Pichai was focused on ChatGPT’s flaws. To protect Google’s business model, Pichai had to persuade the Advanced Technology Review Council to throw off their caution and do as they were told.
