Three quarters of Google's new software is now written by AI

Google's chief executive announced this week that 75 percent of all new code written at Google — the software that runs Search, Gmail, YouTube, and just about everything else the company makes — is now generated by artificial intelligence rather than by human programmers typing it out line by line.

A year ago, that figure was 25 percent. It has tripled in twelve months.

If that sounds alarming, here's a more reassuring way to think about it.

The human engineers haven't gone anywhere. Every line of AI-generated code is still reviewed and approved by a real person before it goes anywhere near the products you use. What's changed is who does the first draft. The AI writes it; the engineer checks it, corrects it, and decides whether it's good enough to use. It's a bit like a very capable assistant who can type faster than any human — but whose work still needs a careful eye before it goes out.

The reason Google is doing this isn't to replace its engineers. It's because AI turns out to be remarkably good at the repetitive, mechanical parts of writing software — the programming equivalent of filling in forms. That frees up the human engineers to spend their time on the parts that actually require human judgment: the tricky decisions, the creative solutions, the things that really matter.

You've probably noticed something similar in your own life. A tool that handles the tedious parts of a task — autocorrect fixing your typos, a GPS working out the route — doesn't replace your judgment. It just means you spend less time on the parts that don't need it.

That, in a nutshell, is what AI is doing at Google. And it's what AI is increasingly doing everywhere.

If you'd like to understand more about how AI works in everyday life — including the parts that already affect you — our books are a good place to start.