How Does Sundar Pichai Define Optimism About Technology?

Sundar Pichai says he holds a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people's lives better, drawn from his own life. The optimism is not a belief that you just build whatever you want. You work hard to harness technology so it works well for society and to build it in the service of humanity, making the human condition better. He treats that goal as the defining aim, and within that framework he is very optimistic.

He thinks the world is in very early stages of the progress still coming across many areas. Healthcare is one area people already discuss, and a lot of the progress is still ahead. He also points to making many things fundamentally cheaper after a long period when they grew more expensive, and to discovering new materials that bend the curve. The impact is hard to grasp from where we stand today, and he expects it to be profound.

He remains very optimistic, and people have to stay rightfully concerned about all the ways technology can go wrong.