Google’s AI push: Co-founder Brin urges ‘60-hour work week’ in memo to employees, calls it ‘sweet spot of productivity’

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said that the tech giant could be a leader in the industry in artificial general intelligence if the company’s employees worked harder than present, suggesting that they should work for 60 hours.

Brin’s comments on Wednesday came in light of Google’s efforts to reassert its position as a pioneer of AI since ChatGPT launched in 2022.

According to a report by The New York TimesBrin suggested employees to work from office on weekdays.

“I recommend being in the office at least every weekday,” he said in the note to employees, NYT reported.

He said that “60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity” in the memo received by Gemini, Google’s lineup of A.I. models and apps.

“Competition has accelerated immensely and the final race to A.G.I. is afoot,” Brin, who is estimated to be worth $144 billion, wrote in the memo, as per the NYT report.

He tried to instill more urgency amongst Google employees to pick up the pace if they are going to win against the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft.

“I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts,” he said, adding that “60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity.”

He also said that engineers should use Google’s AI models to help write their code. Doing so will make them “the most efficient coders and A.I. scientists in the world.”

Similar ideas proposed by leaders of tech giants in recent past are widely seen as an attempt to slow hiring and cut jobs to save money.

Last year, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy had suggested a 70-hour work week.

Earlier in January, L&T Chairman SN Subrahmanyan had suggested 90-hour work week.