{"id":10423,"date":"2026-04-05T08:43:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T08:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/10423\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T08:43:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T08:43:33","slug":"sundar-pichais-dad-jokes-about-indian-roads-after-self-driving-taxi-ride-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/10423\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundar Pichai\u2019s dad jokes about Indian roads after self-driving taxi ride in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sundar Pichai reflected on India\u2019s evolving role in technology while speaking at the AI Impact Summit this morning, recalling how he once used to pass through Visakhapatnam\u2014a quiet coastal city that is now set to become a global AI hub with Google\u2019s investment. Speaking to a large audience that included PM Narendra Modi, the San Francisco-based chief executive of Google also shared a personal glimpse of his life.<\/p>\n

\"GoogleGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai spoke about his parents during his speech at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi (@NarendraModi)<\/p>\n

Pichai, 53, spoke about spending time with his parents in San Francisco, where they got to experience a fully autonomous Waymo ride. Pichai\u2019s mention of Waymo served as an example of the broader technological progress he spoke about.<\/p>\n

Sundar Pichai on Indian roots<\/p>\n

The Madurai-born CEO of Google<\/a> said that during his college days, he sometimes used to take a train between Chennai and IIT Kharagpur.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get there, we passed through Vishakhapatnam, Vizag. I remember it being a quiet and modest coastal city brimming with potential. Now, in that same city, Google is establishing a full-stack AI hub, part of our $15 billion infrastructure investment in India,\u201d said Pichai.<\/p>\n

\u201cSitting on the train, I never imagined Vizag becoming a global AI hub, just as I couldn’t have imagined that one day I’d be spending time with teams figuring out how to put data centers into space, or taking my parents for a fully autonomous car ride in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing Waymo right through my 83-year-old dad’s eyes, I saw the progress in a whole new light,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, he said he\u2019d be more impressed if it worked on India\u2019s busy roads,\u201d Pichai said to chuckles from the audience.<\/p>\n

What is Waymo?<\/p>\n

Waymo is a self-driving technology company and a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google\u2019s parent company. It develops autonomous vehicles\u2014cars and trucks\u2014that use sensors, cameras, and artificial intelligence to drive safely without human intervention.<\/p>\n

Waymo <\/a>started as Google\u2019s self-driving car project in 2009 and became its own company in 2016. Today, it operates Waymo One, a commercial autonomous ride-hailing service in certain US cities, and is also testing autonomous trucks and delivery vehicles.<\/p>\n

(Also read: Google CEO Sundar Pichai lands in India for AI summit: \u2018Nice to be back\u2019<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sundar Pichai reflected on India\u2019s evolving role in technology while speaking at the AI Impact Summit this morning,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[153],"tags":[6962,9370,9369,608,2862],"class_list":["post-10423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sundar-pichai","tag-ai-impact-summit","tag-global-ai-hub","tag-india-technology","tag-sundar-pichai","tag-waymo"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116351218805873837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}