Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai today Delivered the commencement address to Stanford University’s Class of 2026.
The Stanford graduate begins by noting that this is his second commencement speech, his first drawn address As part of a virtual YouTube series during COVID in 2020.
Right off the bat, Pichai addresses how graduates have touched on any mention of artificial intelligence during other addresses in recent weeks.
…people also give me a lot of advice on what to say. In fact, it’s the same advice and what not to say. People thought it would be really hard for me; those are the last two letters of my last name, after all.
With a bit of humor, he continues that “the most timeless piece of advice I’ve ever learned is to be technology agnostic.”
The premise of Pichai’s advice is “how very few moments in life are made or broken.” Sundar shared a rather poetic story about how “(he) came to learn it”:
One Wednesday morning in January, in my first winter term, we were going to class. (A classmate) “Want to go to Vegas instead?” I have never missed a class. I had never traveled before. (Actually, this is the first time my parents have ever heard of it.) Nevertheless, I said “sure.” So we went back to our dorm rooms, grabbed a few things and headed out.
You have to cross mountains to get there. As we passed through them, it started to snow. I have never seen snow before. I reached out to grab it and couldn’t believe how soft the thud was. Pat stopped the car so I could get out; It was really beautiful, a moment I will never forget.
Nine hours after we left, we arrived in Vegas with the night lights on the horizon. I didn’t know what to think. Pat taught me how to play blackjack. I started with five dollars and managed to get fifteen more and “I’m out!” We didn’t have money to stay long, so we started back the next day.
No one seemed to notice that we skipped class. For the first time, I realized that if I relaxed a little, the world wouldn’t end.
You will face many moments in your life. Only a few of them are really important and you need to get them right: Choosing a partner, starting a family or building a bigger career. These decisions take time and intention.
However, you will encounter many more moments in your life that seem really big…Thousands, actually. And very few of them make or break: Your first job out of college? City to move to next? Should you take this trip? While these moments add texture to your journey, they rarely determine the course of your life.
But if you can filter the signal through the noise, you can change your life to the effect you want in these moments.
Pichai goes on to share “three simple filters” that “help (him) get the right moment rather than the wrong one and take some of the pressure off,” with examples from his life and Google career.
“Choose Optimism”
If you’re not from here, California is advertised as really lush and green. But looking out the window, it was more… brown. I think I said it out loud, I don’t know why. My host, Mrs. Jane Earle, gently corrected me. “We prefer to call it gold,” he said.
This is exactly what I mean by choosing optimism. It’s about reframing for the positive: Where I saw brown, he saw gold. This small shift in perspective had a huge impact on how I thought about the world around me…
Despite the brown hills and cold ocean, it seemed to me that almost everyone I met had a generally positive outlook on life. Maybe it’s because he can wear shorts all year round, I don’t know.
I found myself embracing this Californian optimism. And it helped me navigate one of my bigger directions during my time at Stanford: I came here with the full intention of getting a Ph.D. and moving into academia. Life had other plans and I should have gotten a job sooner.
“Eager to work on difficult things”
I’d love to say I was an instant success after leaving Stanford…I wasn’t. Even after ten years, I felt like I wasn’t on the right track and it took me a while to find my place.
Until you turn to Google.
The first “impossible problem” he worked on was creating Chrome.
And in 2008, we launched what we thought was a great browser. We had eight million users in the first twenty-four hours and the feedback was really positive. And then user growth stopped.
After a year, we had about two percent share. I remember Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mocking Chrome in an interview and calling it a rounding error.
It could be discouraging. But with Californian optimism, I told the team that the fact that he was doing everything he could to fire us meant we were doing something right.
We continued to set highly aggressive targets to continue pushing the team. We iterated rapidly, we ship a browser every six weeks, while others ship maybe every six months to a year. Success began to follow.
Working on difficult things has taught me a lot: It usually attracts other great and optimistic people. Even if you fall short of your lofty goals, you will still achieve something great.
So when you have the choice to work on something difficult – say yes.
“All things being equal, do what excites you”
I didn’t have much access to computers until I came to Stanford. So you can imagine my surprise when I walked into Sweet Hall and saw rows and rows of computers that I could use whenever I wanted.
It was 1993 and the internet was literally being built around me. I saw it as the main factor of human progress. The idea that I could be a part of bringing this to as many people as possible was exciting. So I accepted the offer at Google. And why I later missed the chance to work on projects like Chromebook and Android.
Here is the full transcript of the speech available herenot yet available with video.
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