Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who’s currently hard at work automating human labor at an incredible scale, is very confused as to why anyone might suggest that AI might replace human workers. Fresh on the heels of Google’s Wall Street-winning and heavily AI-focused I/O conference, Pichai made an appearance on The Verge’s Decoder podcast. And editor-in-chief Nilay Patel wasted no time in hitting him with some tough questions about AI-abetted job losses. “If you believe it’s a platform shift, this might be the first platform shift that regulators understand because it’s very obvious what kind of labor will be displaced,” said Patel. “Lawyers, mostly, is what I gather, right? They can see, okay, a bunch of white-collar labor will go away, like a C-plus email about a transaction, entire floors of those people can be reduced.” Patel’s question isn’t exactly out of left field. Some industries have already seen job losses, while a recent Goldman-Sachs memo estimated that roughly 300 million jobs could feasibly be delegated to AI. Pichai, however, didn’t quite rise to the occasion. “For 20 years of tech automation, people have predicted all kinds of jobs would go away,” Pichai responded, adding that “movie theaters were supposed to end” as the result of tech innovation. That’s an interesting choice on Pichai’s behalf, considering that theater attendance has been steadily declining since 2002, not to mention that Hollywood is in the throes of a writer’s strike in which AI has emerged as a major issue. But when Patel pointed out that the film…Google CEO Baffled by Suggestion That AI Will Take People’s Jobs