Posted on 04/26/2026 8:36:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
From software engineers to nontechnical staff, Google has urged its employees to fully embrace AI. And it seems like the push to use the tech has resulted in a major productivity leap.
In a Wednesday blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that three-quarters of the company’s new code is AI-generated.
“We’ve been using AI to generate code internally at Google for a while,” Pichai said. “Today, 75% of all new code at Google is now AI-generated and approved by engineers, up from 50% last fall.
“We’re now shifting to truly agentic workflows. Our engineers are orchestrating fully autonomous digital task forces, firing off agents, and accomplishing incredible things,” he continued.
Pichai wrote that Google is “staying on the cutting edge” by being “customer zero” of its own products. For example, he said, a recent “complex code migration” completed by both agents and engineers was done six times faster than what was possible just a year ago with engineers alone.
While the work has evolved, the fundamentals of Google’s engineering workforce have stayed the same, Google Cloud senior director and chief evangelist Richard Seroter told Fast Company.
With AI-generated code approved by humans—which Seroter called “critical in this era”—engineers are able to focus on “higher-value tasks like system architecture, design, and solving complex problems.”
At Google, the title of “software engineer” seems to have grown outdated. “Software engineers are becoming product engineers, or architects, as they move away from manual coding and toward an agentic operating model,” Seroter told Fast Company.
“Excitedly, many prior limits have dissolved,” he added. “No longer are Google engineers constrained by time or human energy, but rather can use AI to explore a seemingly endless array of ideas that benefit our users.”
It’s not just engineers utilizing AI tools at Google, though. According to Pichai’s blog post, Google’s marketing teams used AI models to “rapidly generate thousands of variations” of creative assets, which otherwise would have taken weeks.
“Using AI led to 70% faster turnaround and a 20% increase in conversions, getting us to market faster and more effectively,” Pichai said.
It’s a busy time for Google. At its Cloud Next 2026 conference, the company announced the launch of two new AI chips, as well as the release of a new Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. At the conference, Pichai also said that Google will invest up to $185 billion on infrastructure to power autonomous AI agents. Google Cloud recently signed a multibillion-dollar deal with ex-OpenAI executive Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab to expand on its AI infrastructure. Over the next few years, Seroter said that Google will be “prioritizing agent-first experiences.”
“The experimental phase of simple copilots is over. Tab completion, context-unaware chatbots, and ‘AI, please start this for me’ is no longer sufficient. We’re in the era of making AI and agents complete relevant work, steered by human operators,” Seroter said.
“For Google, the next few years are about transitioning from simple code generation to managed agency—where we provide a governed, enterprise-ready harness to build and scale autonomous agents,” he added.
Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference, is scheduled for May 19, where Pichai said further announcements are in store.
When it comes to building and scaling AI agents, it doesn’t seem like Google will slow down anytime soon.
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I’m calling BS on that.
I do not believe that claim.
If a trillion-dollar commercial ecommerce, advertising and content hosting / creation enterprise company admits 75% of code is AI generated then government oversight / compliance framework is needed immediately. That is something I don’t say lightly, red tape & bureaucracy are typically bullshit hurdles to innovation but in the case of AI the horse is way out in front of the trainer and the reins need to be pulled hard.
One of his underlings told him this and he believes it. Why 75% from 50%? Such round numbers. Wild estimates based on some decree passed down from the top.
Complete BS. He’s claiming that to avoid claims of using foreign labor.
And no one is checking if the coding is good or secure because of the pressure for rapid AI adoption coming from people like Pichai who are only looking at the bottom line.
Actually, with how it all performs, I fully believe this.
Humans couldn’t make it that bad.
AI can generate code but it will not account for every possible negative test case. Yet.
I’m still in software QA at 61 and my last contract just ended, I’ll be 62 in October and I’m retiring ASAFP. I’m fighting age discrimination as well as the fact that 9 out of 10 high tech jobs are going to foreigners.
It took me 8 months to get the last contract. They hired me without an interview.
-SB
ping
Completely believable and I believe the number is likely higher but he is being conservative. In less than a year Gemini’s capabilities have increased by leaps and bounds. I used to hate it. Now it’s my go to llm for everything. I even have a local installation of a ‘small language model’ - Gemma 2. A thing that separates Google from other AI companies is that their models run on their own internally developed hardware (Tensor Processing Units or TPU’s), not nVidia chips.
Regarding 9 out of 10 jobs, are you referring to the recent post about 9 out 10 hired in recent years have been foreign born, including green cards?
See :
https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub
https://ifspp.substack.com/p/graduating-into-second-place
So that’s the problem?
Wonder if hackers are salivating?
What if Google was entirely AI? Even Pai........
Yeah but Google is so sh*try.
No longer a decent search engine.
Don’t use the main search engine. Click on the ai tab on the search page and ask your question.
I’ve seen AI produced code and it’s a lot of spaghetti code.
Good luck trying to debug it when it fails somewhere.
Deport the Hindus...
Didn’t know what “agentic” meant so I asked Chatgpt.
It’s, his or her answer was,” Programs that can plan,decide and act on their own...”
we will hear this word again. How do we know what percentage of any effort an independent actor is doing?
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