Google’s EMEA President, Matt Brittin has seen over 50% of the planet gain access to the internet. Here are his takeaways from his time at the top.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00If you think about AI, a bit like electricity, we don't need everybody to work in power stations,
00:04but we do need everybody to be able to safely use electricity to improve their lives. We built the
00:09traffic lights before the cars, and Europeans are already getting second quality rather than
00:14top quality digital tools. Welcome to The Big Question,
00:24the series from Euronews where we speak to some of the biggest names in business.
00:28Today, I'm joined by Matt Britton, President of Google for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
00:33So thank you very much for joining us, Matt. Great to be here. Thank you.
00:35And a recent Google report found that generative AI could add between 1.2 and 1.4 trillion euros
00:42to the EU's GDP within a decade. Can you just explain how is that possible?
00:46People have started to experience generative AI in the form of chatbots, and you can see how that
00:50can help you with certain tasks. But actually, as you start to see the next iterations of what
00:55these things can do, you start to realize just how much productivity opportunity there is.
01:00We work with HSBC on fraud detection, and AI is helping them to find many more potential
01:06cases of fraud and therefore increase the quality of services they offer to customers.
01:11The entire tech sector has been quite vocal about the EU needs to do more to harness this growth.
01:16So in your opinion, what are the most urgent steps that we need to take?
01:19I'm afraid the EU hasn't done a brilliant job in introducing regulations. We need rules of the road
01:24for this technology. Given the pace of change, it's very hard for lawmakers to write laws today
01:30that can prescribe what technology is going to be able to do by the time the ink's dry,
01:35let alone it's been in place for five years. So that means having laws that define responsibilities
01:40and principles, and then codes of practice and ways of operating and scrutinizing the technology
01:46that help us to keep it safe. What I'd like to see is I'd like to see Europe really grab the moment.
01:52If we're slow, then we've got a challenge. And I think, you know, I was speaking to a
01:57very senior German business leader in the summer who said to me, you know, the challenge in Europe
02:01is we built the traffic lights before the cars. And what they meant by that, obviously, is we
02:06haven't figured out how we want to use this technology, but we've already, you know, constrained
02:10it. And I think, you know, we see that, you know, Apple and Meta and Google have all slowed down
02:15our product launches in Europe following the implementation of the Digital Markets Act,
02:19which is rightly there to regulate the larger technology players. But it means that we have
02:24to be more cautious. We have to jump through more hoops. And Europeans are already getting
02:30second quality rather than top quality digital tools.
02:40Are there any specific industries or sectors that you think are really poised to benefit,
02:44particularly from AI-driven innovation? I think health is going to see huge
02:48transformations. You know, our colleagues at Google DeepMind just won the Nobel Prize
02:54for chemistry with computer science. So if you're starting some research on a rare disease,
02:57you used to have to go and get funding for a load of PhDs to spend five to 10 years figuring out the
03:033D structure of proteins. And there was a database of 175,000 proteins. With AI, in a matter of 24
03:10months, we were able to produce a database of 214 million. And already 2.3 million researchers
03:17are using that database that our team has made available for free. We're working in energy,
03:22so optimizing grids, bringing more renewables online. There's incredible work going on nuclear
03:29fusion. The challenge with nuclear fusion, as I understand it, and I'm not a rocket scientist,
03:34is that you've got to have a plasma field stabilized by magnetic fields to kind of
03:39sustain the reaction so you can harness the energy. Well, that's hard to do because they're
03:43very, very unstable and hard to predict. But what's AI good at? It's good at spotting patterns,
03:48making predictions, and learning. So applying that to plasma fields, actually, you can start
03:53to stabilize them for longer. We're starting to see some breakthroughs there now. I'm not saying
03:56that's going to be tomorrow, but imagine clean, low-cost energy for everyone. That's just a dream.
04:01That's a dream. And that could really change people's lives for the better. Brilliant. And
04:06whilst we're on the subject of AI and work, I thought I'd ask Google Gemini if it can do part
04:11of my job. So I asked it what I should ask you today. How can Google better support the European
04:16tech ecosystem and foster innovation within the region? Well, it's a great question. Thank you,
04:20Gemini, and thank you, Hannah. So one of the ways, you know, when I took the job of running Google in
04:25Europe and Middle East and Africa 10 years ago, a report landed on my desk in my first week,
04:30and it was the EU saying a million jobs are going to be unfilled because of a lack of digital skills.
04:36And I sort of thought we should be doing something about that. Roll forward 10 years,
04:38and we trained something like 14 million Europeans, 50-50 male, female, many of them in
04:44the tech startup side, but also the majority of them, you know, just in the everyday economy.
04:49What you can see is when people have got the right skills, then they can harness the technology for
04:53good and for growth. So where we've been able to track what people have done after the training,
04:58we found that people have gone on to, you know, grow in their career, get a new job or start a
05:02business. And now we can talk to governments about that. And obviously the programs we're
05:06doing today are more skewed towards AI and cybersecurity skills where there's a real
05:10shortage. But don't forget, and if you think about AI, a bit like electricity, we don't need
05:17everybody to work in power stations, but we do need everybody to be able to safely use electricity
05:22to improve their lives. And that's the way to think about it. So being a global tech giant,
05:26you know, Google isn't just about AI. Are there any other tech developments that you're particularly
05:31excited about in Google's future? Well, we talked a lot about Google in Europe for obvious reasons,
05:36but I'm also responsible for Google in Africa and I was in Nigeria and Kenya recently. And it
05:40just reminded me of the transformational potential of technology because in many of the countries
05:46there, people are coming online for the first time. So we just reached the point in Nigeria
05:51where I think it's 52% of people are connected for the first time and it really changes people's
05:55lives for the better. And what I think we'll see is some of these countries accelerating faster
06:02than Europe. So for example, in Kenya, I visited a project that we're supporting called Jacaranda
06:08Health and it's working on maternal health. So the death rate through the childbirth process
06:13in Kenya is twice the global average. And one of the reasons is access to ultrasound. It's
06:21about $70,000, I understand, to have an ultrasound unit and about 200 hours of training for somebody
06:26to operate it. The team out there have got $2,000 units that are handheld and with our team,
06:32they've worked on AI so that somebody who's not been trained for more than an hour or two can
06:38take an accurate ultrasound scan of a woman and the AI can help to identify the position and stage
06:44of the fetus' gestation. That makes a huge difference. So you can suddenly transform the
06:49availability and the reach of the healthcare system. Absolutely fantastic, yeah. And finally,
06:55you soon are handing over your responsibilities after having spent a decade as president and 18
07:00years at Google. Yes, I was a child when I started. In that time, what are the biggest
07:06changes you've seen and what have you learned? So when I started at Google, it was 2007 and
07:11less than 20% of people on the planet were connected. The people who were connected
07:15were on dial-up and now the vast majority of people on the planet are online, over 70%.
07:21So it's a huge change to have all those people connected to the world's information
07:26and overwhelmingly positive change for the world. So transformation of access,
07:31transformation of how easy it is to access information and exchange information in your
07:35own world and now we're at a new take-off point which is being able to offer the world intelligence
07:40increasingly in the tools you use every day. Well, thank you so much for your time. I look
07:45forward to seeing what adventures you have next and thank you for joining us today on The Big
07:49Question. Anna, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.