Alphabet’s Chief Executive Sundar Pichai received a total compensation of approximately $226 million in 2022, which is over 800 times the median pay of an Alphabet employee, according to a recent securities filing. Pichai’s remuneration package includes stock awards amounting to nearly $218 million.
This revelation comes at a time when Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has been implementing job cuts on a global scale. In January, the Mountain View, California-based tech giant announced plans to eliminate 12,000 jobs worldwide, representing a 6 percent reduction in its total workforce.
Earlier in April, hundreds of Google employees staged a walkout at the company’s London office in response to a disagreement over layoffs. A similar protest took place in March when more than 200 workers were let go at Google’s Zurich office, prompting employees to walk out.
In the midst of these developments, Alphabet is focusing on enhancing its AI chatbot, Bard, to gain a competitive edge. On Friday, Google revealed that Bard, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot designed to assist users in writing code for software development, is part of the company’s efforts to catch up in the rapidly advancing AI technology field.
Bard is capable of coding in 20 programming languages, including Java, C++, and Python. Additionally, the chatbot can help users debug and comprehend code. Google also stated that Bard can optimize code to improve its speed or efficiency based on simple prompts, such as “Could you make that code faster?”.
At present, a limited number of users have access to Bard, allowing them to engage with the chatbot and ask questions as an alternative to using Google’s traditional search tool.
