We Asked Google's Co-Founder About AI Smart Glasses. Here's What He Said
Sergey Brin acknowledged that Google Glass may have been ahead of its time.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin appeared at this year's Google I/O developer conference.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance at the company's I/O conference, and there was one topic that was top of mind: Project Astra. The company's futuristic virtual assistant seems like a prime candidate for smart glasses, raising questions about whether Google Glass will get a revival.
"It's funny, because it's like the perfect hardware," Brin, who famously championed Google Glass more than a decade ago, said to a group of reporters that included CNET. He was responding to a question about whether Astra signals the return of Google Glass. "It's like the killer app now, 10 years later."
Google demoed Project Astra alongside the announcement of a slew of new AI products at its annual conference that included updates to its Gemini AI model, revamps to search and ways AI can assist with everyday tasks like summarizing threads in Gmail.
Asked if Glass would be making a comeback, Brin said, "We'll have to think about that." But he acknowledged that when it comes to Astra, "hands-free is the idea." He noted that companies have made AI clips and devices, likely a reference to the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1, but he said that a glasses "form factor was pretty cool," and that he wishes he "had timed that a bit better."
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He also added that "something wearable" is "more ideal hardware" than a phone for use cases like those shown in the Project Astra video.
It was reported by The Wall Street Journal last year that Brin was back at the company he co-founded to work on Google's AI products, which included Gemini, the model that Google touted heavily throughout Tuesday's event. (For a hands-on review of Gemini and other AI chatbots, along with explainers, tips and news, see CNET's new AI Atlas hub.)
Google demoed Astra with experimental glasses in a video, but Brin said he didn't know what that product was. "But there are now lots of companies and lots of displays out there that are pretty interesting, so we'll see how people use them," he said.
Brin noted that a lot of the demos that Google showed off were based on the same Gemini Pro 1.5 AI model, something he said he found "really exciting and that's surprising even," that "these AI models can be so general purpose right off the bat."
In a wide-ranging conversation, Brin said he watched OpenAI's GPT-4o announcement, but that he didn't yet have a chance to play with it. As for how AI fits into his life today, Brin says that he uses it "a lot for coding" and that using Gemini for that purpose is "kind of extraordinary."
Google demonstrated Astra on a phone and also on camera-enabled glasses.
In a debate with a member of his team, a colleague asked how good AI would be at solving sudoku puzzles. So Brin decided to put it to the test. "And I just said, 'well, why don't I see?' And I actually had it write a piece of code to generate sudoku puzzles, and then test the solutions."
Coding, in Brin's view, is the "No. 1" use of AI today.
"It wasn't completely flawless," he said, referring to using AI for coding. "But [there were] a couple of minor issues that I'd cleaned up right away. That was pretty amazing."
When it comes to AI hallucinations, Brin says that it is a "big problem" but that it is "shrinking" and that he "wouldn't be shocked if there were some significant advances that would really, you know, make orders-of-magnitude improvements."
While he was retired, Brin seems to be reinvigorated by the opportunity to shape AI.
"It's just such an exciting time," he said, noting that this is what brought him out of the brief retirement he entered prior to COVID. "With this AI boom… being a computer scientist, like, I want to be a part of that. It's just so exciting. And yeah, it's a treat," he said.
"I can't imagine a better time to be a computer scientist, and I feel super lucky to be able to see the details of how these things work," he said.
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