Artificial intelligence is going to be bigger than the internet
Sundar Pichai, speaking from the commanding heights of one of the world's most powerful technology companies, has offered a rare and unambiguous forecast: artificial intelligence will surpass the internet as the most transformative force in modern history. His conviction rests not on speculation but on a structural argument — that just as the internet created companies and categories no one could have anticipated, AI will do the same, only at greater scale and speed. The next three to five years, he believes, will begin to reveal what most of society has not yet allowed itself to imagine. We are, in his telling, still in the opening pages of a story whose full arc remains unwritten.
- Pichai warns that society is systematically underestimating the velocity and magnitude of the AI revolution already in motion.
- Despite AI tools being woven into daily life, he insists we remain in the earliest act — the most disruptive chapters have not yet been written.
- The convergence of AI and hardware innovation creates a rare window of opportunity that developers, companies, and entire industries are racing to seize.
- Google is not waiting for the future to arrive: $15 billion in data center infrastructure and Waymo's autonomous vehicle push signal that the company is building the physical backbone of an AI-defined world.
- The companies and product categories that will dominate the next decade do not yet exist — and that absence is precisely the point Pichai wants the world to absorb.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, has made an unusually direct claim: artificial intelligence will prove more transformative than the internet itself. Speaking at Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco and in conversations with The Verge, he argued that despite the widespread adoption of AI tools, we are still in the opening act. The true potential of the technology, he believes, will emerge over the next three to five years — and most of society has not yet grasped what that means.
To make his case, Pichai returns to a familiar but instructive analogy. When the internet was young, Google did not exist. The web created the conditions for entirely new companies, products, and business categories that no one could have predicted. AI, he argues, will do something even larger — generating innovations and industries that are still beyond our current imagination. "Artificial intelligence is going to be bigger than the internet," he said plainly.
Pichai also points to hardware as a particularly fertile frontier, where technological capability and human need are converging in ways only beginning to be explored. He worries, however, that the sheer pace of simultaneous change makes it easy to miss the magnitude of what is unfolding. "People tend to underestimate this moment," he observed.
Looking further ahead, Pichai envisions a decade shaped by superintelligence — a layer of digital capability that will reshape health, education, transportation, and work. These are not abstract predictions. Google has committed more than $15 billion to energy-efficient data centers in India, and its autonomous vehicle division Waymo continues its push toward mainstream self-driving technology. The race, he notes, was already underway before the public became aware of it, built on years of foundational work through Google Brain and DeepMind.
What Pichai is ultimately saying is that we are living through a hinge moment in technological history. The companies that will matter most in ten years do not yet exist. The products that will define the next era have not been built. For those paying attention, the opportunity is immense — and for those who are not, the cost of inattention may prove equally significant.
Sundar Pichai sits at the center of one of technology's most consequential bets. As the chief executive of Google and Alphabet, he has spent the last several years watching artificial intelligence move from research lab curiosity to the thing billions of people interact with every day. And he believes what's coming next will dwarf everything that came before it—including the internet itself.
In recent conversations with The Verge and at Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco, Pichai has been unusually direct about the scale of what he sees unfolding. The true potential of AI, he argues, will reveal itself over the next three to five years. Right now, despite the fact that intelligent tools are woven into daily life, we are still in the opening act. The society has not yet grasped what's possible. "There is so much innovation ahead of us," he said, speaking with the tone of someone who has glimpsed something others have not yet fully registered.
To understand his conviction, Pichai reaches back to the early days of the internet. When the web was young, Google did not exist. The company that would come to dominate search and reshape advertising was not even a thought. That absence is instructive. The internet created the conditions for entirely new kinds of companies, products, and business categories that no one could have predicted in advance. Pichai believes artificial intelligence will do something even larger. "Artificial intelligence is going to be bigger than the internet," he said flatly. The implication is stark: we should expect the unexpected. Companies and categories we cannot yet imagine will emerge from this shift.
What makes this moment particularly fertile, in Pichai's view, is the convergence of opportunity in hardware. The next generation of devices and platforms will be shaped by AI in ways that are only beginning to be explored. For developers and consumers alike, he sees genuine excitement—a rare alignment of technological capability and human need. Yet he also detects a widespread blindness to what is actually happening. "People tend to underestimate this moment," he observed, noting that the sheer velocity of simultaneous change makes it easy to miss the magnitude of the transformation underway.
Over the coming decade, Pichai envisions a world shaped by what he calls superintelligence—a layer of digital intelligence that will reshape how we approach health, education, transportation, and work. This is not science fiction rhetoric. Google has already committed more than $15 billion to building energy-efficient data centers in India. The company's autonomous vehicle division, Waymo, continues to push toward a future where self-driving technology is commonplace. These are not speculative bets; they are infrastructure plays.
Pickhai acknowledges that the emergence of ChatGPT and Microsoft's backing of OpenAI accelerated the pace of competition and innovation across the industry. But he is careful to note that Google had already laid the groundwork through institutions like Google Brain and DeepMind, now integrated into the company's core strategy. The race, in other words, was already underway before the public suddenly became aware of it.
What Pichai is really saying, beneath the measured corporate language, is that we are living through a hinge moment in technological history. The internet connected people and information. Artificial intelligence will do something more fundamental: it will augment human capability at scale, across every domain of human activity. The companies that will matter most in ten years do not yet exist. The products that will define the next era have not been built. The categories that will structure entire industries are still unnamed. For those paying attention, the opportunity is immense. For those who miss it, the cost of inattention may be equally large.
Notable Quotes
There is so much innovation ahead of us— Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet
People tend to underestimate this moment— Sundar Pichai
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When Pichai says AI will be bigger than the internet, what does he actually mean? The internet connected billions of people. What's the analogy?
He's not talking about scale of users—he's talking about the depth of transformation. The internet created new categories of companies we couldn't have predicted. Google itself didn't exist when the web was born. He's saying AI will do something even more fundamental: it will reshape how work gets done, how decisions get made, how problems get solved. Entirely new industries will emerge from it.
But we already use AI every day. Chatbots, image generators, recommendation systems. Why does he think the real potential is still three to five years away?
Because what we're using now is still relatively narrow. These tools are good at specific tasks. What he's describing is something more integrated—AI that becomes the operating system for how we approach health, education, transportation, work. That requires breakthroughs we haven't had yet, and infrastructure we're still building.
He mentions that people tend to underestimate this moment. What does he think people are missing?
The velocity. Too many things are changing at once—quantum computing, robotics, AI itself evolving rapidly. When everything shifts simultaneously, it's hard to see the shape of it. Most people are focused on the immediate tool in front of them, not the systemic change underneath.
Google is investing $15 billion in data centers and pushing Waymo toward autonomous vehicles. Are those bets on the superintelligence he's describing?
Exactly. Those aren't separate projects. They're infrastructure for a world where AI is embedded in every layer—the power systems that run it, the vehicles that move through cities, the platforms that mediate information. He's building the foundation for the world he's predicting.
Does he worry about getting this wrong? About overpromising?
He seems confident, not reckless. He's careful to say the potential will emerge, not that it's guaranteed. And he acknowledges that competition—ChatGPT, Microsoft, OpenAI—accelerated things. But he's not defensive about it. He sees it as validation that the moment is real.