Google CEO admits coding lag as the company races toward AGI, fearing loss of control

Gemini coding agents lag behind competitors

During a New York Times technology podcast Sundar Pichai said Google’s Gemini coding agents are “not at the front” compared with rivals such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Cursor.

Rapid pace of AI development

Pichai noted that a 30‑ to 60‑day cycle now feels like five years of progress in earlier eras, and internal token consumption for Gemini models has been doubling each week, indicating heavy real‑world usage.

Gemini 3.5 Flash

The newly launched Gemini 3.5 Flash model “fills several short‑comings” of the previous generation. Google plans to iterate quickly based on user feedback and post‑deployment fine‑tuning.

Coding‑agent capabilities

Google’s overall multimodal, reasoning and language capabilities remain strong.

Tool‑calling agents for programming, instruction following and long‑running multi‑step tasks are still behind the state of the art.

Complex, long‑term coding work still requires senior engineers; Google sees room for improvement.

Internal system “Antigravity 2.0” has been used internally for weeks and shows rapid token‑usage growth.

Resource focus and competition

Pichai said Google can invest in multiple fronts simultaneously because of its scale, but the coding‑agent space is at a “turning point” with many startups advancing quickly.

Search redesign

Google announced the largest redesign of Search in 25 years, adding an AI‑first “AI Mode” while preserving the classic web‑search experience to meet user expectations.

Public perception of AI

A New York Times and Siena poll cited by Pichai shows roughly 35 % of respondents view AI negatively, reflecting concerns about job displacement and income security.

AGI and safety

Pichai stated that progress toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) appears inevitable and that the industry must avoid a competitive race. He defined the “singularity” as the arrival of AGI and called for a broad, responsible dialogue about recursive self‑improvement.

Outlook

Pichai expressed optimism that AI will enable more people to write code, increase productivity across professions, and create new opportunities, while acknowledging the need for careful societal preparation.

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