Sundar Pichai: AI Won’t Replace Coders Yet—Google to Hire More Engineers Despite AI Boom

As artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s own Jules evolve at breakneck speed, fears surrounding job displacement—especially in white-collar roles—continue to grow. But Google CEO Sundar Pichai has offered a reassuring perspective: AI isn’t replacing coders anytime soon. In fact, it’s helping them thrive.

Speaking on Lex Fridman’s podcast, Pichai addressed the growing influence of AI in software development. “We’ve given various stats—around 30% of code now uses AI-generated solutions,” he said. “But the most important metric is how much our engineering velocity has increased as a company due to AI.”

According to Pichai, internal estimates at Google show a 10% increase in engineering velocity, a productivity metric that the company monitors rigorously.

Despite the rise of AI coding agents—such as OpenAI’s Codex and Google’s Jules, launched at I/O 2025—Pichai emphasized that Google plans to hire more software engineers in the near to mid-term.

“The opportunity space of what we can do is expanding,” Pichai explained. “Even in engineering and coding, there are aspects which are so much fun—designing, architecting, solving problems. There’s a lot of grunt work, which AI helps eliminate.”

While Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warned that up to 50% of white-collar entry-level jobs could be eliminated within five years, Pichai remains optimistic about AI’s impact on the workforce.

“It makes it even more fun to code, frees you up more time to create, problem-solve, brainstorm with your fellow colleagues,” he said. “It’ll put the creative power in more people’s hands… there’ll be more engineers doing more things.”

Pichai’s remarks position AI as a tool for augmentation rather than replacement—a stance that highlights the continued need for human creativity in an increasingly automated tech industry.