Your next financial advisor might not have a Series 7 license. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, artificial intelligence is advancing fast enough that within the next year, it could start making significant decisions on your behalf—everything from which stocks to buy to whether that medical treatment your doctor recommended is worth the side effects.
In a recent interview with BBC, Pichai described this evolution as "really interesting," explaining that AI will soon tackle more complex tasks rather than just answering basic questions. He acknowledged the technology will eliminate some jobs while causing others to "evolve and transition" into new forms.
The Great AI Employment Debate
Tech executives can't seem to agree on what AI means for the workforce, and the divide is getting wider.
Take Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, who told Big Technology in October that early enterprise AI deployments weren't replacing workers at all. Companies using Google's tools "have not let go anybody," he said, pushing back hard against predictions of mass automation. In his view, businesses are using AI to handle routine tasks, not pink slips.
Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff struck a similar tone in an interview with YouTube show "TBPN" that same month. He insisted AI wouldn't replace human sales roles and pointed out that Salesforce is actually expanding its sales workforce even as it rolls out new AI capabilities.
On the flip side, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk posted on X that "AI and robots will replace all jobs," suggesting work itself might become optional in the future—"like growing your own vegetables," he added with characteristic flair.
Perhaps most striking was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said on the "Conversations with Tyler" podcast last month: "Shame on me if OpenAI is not the first big company run by an AI CEO."
AI as Your Personal Decision-Maker
Pichai's vision goes beyond automating spreadsheets or scheduling meetings. "There are moments it can help you make a decision, like it could be, should I invest in this stock," he told BBC. He imagines people eventually asking AI to weigh the pros and cons of medical treatments their doctors recommend—essentially turning the technology into a second opinion on major life choices.
The timing of Pichai's comments aligns with a flurry of AI updates across Google's ecosystem. Last month, the company introduced Private AI Compute, a new processing platform that runs Gemini models in the cloud while keeping user data private. A week later came Gemini 3, the latest model boasting improvements in reasoning, multimodal tasks, and coding benchmarks.
According to Pichai, these are just stepping stones. He told BBC that additional capabilities are still in development, with continued progress underway across Google's product lineup as new tools roll out.
The question isn't whether AI will get more capable—that seems inevitable. The question is whether you'll trust it to manage your portfolio or question your oncologist.