Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, stated that artificial intelligence is not coming to replace humans or take over their jobs. On the contrary, it serves as a bridge helping workers transition from what they can do today to what they aspire to achieve tomorrow.

In an interview with the tech newsletter Big Technology, Kurian rejected the widespread notion that AI will lead to millions of job losses, emphasizing a “middle ground” between exaggerating threats and overpromising benefits. He explained that AI should be seen as a tool that amplifies human capabilities rather than replaces them.

His remarks come amid global debate on whether AI threatens the workforce or ushers in a new era of productivity. Kurian views AI as “not an adversary but a colleague at work.”

He gave the example of Google’s Customer Engagement Suite, a set of AI tools on the Google Cloud platform designed to help companies respond to customer inquiries faster and more effectively.

Kurian explained that initial reactions when the tool was launched last year were tense, with some wondering, “Does this mean we no longer need customer service employees?” However, the outcome was quite the opposite; according to Kurian, almost no client companies lost jobs. Instead, AI took over routine, simple, or awkward questions, freeing employees to focus on more important and complex issues.

He pointed out that this is the essence of technology use from his perspective: enhancing the quality of human work, not eliminating it.

Kurian’s vision aligns with statements by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, who said earlier this year on the Lex Fridman podcast that AI increased Google employees’ productivity by nearly 10%, especially among engineers, encouraging the company to expand hiring rather than reduce it.

Pichai said AI “expands the boundaries of what we can accomplish,” explaining that the goal is for technology to handle routine programming or management tasks while humans focus on creative and intellectually satisfying work.

Kurian’s stance is backed by a rich personal background; he is a self-taught immigrant from India who began his career as a consultant at McKinsey, then spent over two decades at Oracle, rising to become one of its top executives before taking over Google Cloud in 2019 and leading it to become one of the company’s fastest-growing divisions.

Notably, innovation runs in his family, as his twin brother George Kurian is CEO of NetApp, a data infrastructure company, making them one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful leadership duos.

For Thomas Kurian, the future of AI is not a nightmare of layoffs but an opportunity to reinvent and improve the work environment. He believes the key lies in how technology is used—as an assistant that enhances performance and creativity, not as a machine that replaces humans.