AI Impact Summit 2025: Google Cloud COO Says AI Puts a Premium on Curiosity

The first day of Newsweek’s AI Impact Summit brought together 130 experts and industry leaders to discuss how organizations can implement, scale and govern AI.

The overarching goal of these discussions was to demonstrate the value of AI and the practical impact AI tools have on organizations across industries.

Newsweek Contributing Editor Marcus Weldon opened the summit with a presentation about what he has learned from Newsweek’s AI interview series. He explained how the conversations about AI seem to be exclusively on one side of the extreme – it’s either going to save humanity or end it.

“The whole goal of the series is to find rational value,” he said. “We’re not skeptical, but we’re not overly optimistic.”

Babak Hodjat, Cognizant’s chief technology officer of AI, also gave a presentation on the company’s use of agentic AI. Cognizant, the sponsor of the event, also had demonstrations of its multi-agent AI both on and off stage that enabled attendees to build a custom system to take home.

At the first panel, leaders from Toyota Motor North America, Scahill Law Group and Google Cloud discussed AI use cases at their respective companies. They all explained that AI tools help boost efficiency and productivity by handling more routine tasks, thereby freeing up time for employees to focus on more meaningful, strategic work.

While AI has many benefits, Melody Ayeli, the senior director of enterprise AI at Toyota Motor North America, said that they are not rushing into AI implementation without proper regulations and testing.

“We’re a company that’s very conservative because we put safety and quality first, and so that extends to AI,” she said. “Anything that we put in the car is rigorously tested, and as you know, [AI] is not always correct, so there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure that it’s accurate and for us, it’s very serious.”

In addition to human speakers, there was also a sidewalk delivery robot from Serve Robotics at the “AI in Motion: Designing for Driving the Future” panel. Both speakers from Designworks, a BMW Company, and Serve Robotics spoke about how they are using AI to design the best products.

During each of their one-on-one conversations, leaders from Zoom, Ancestry.com and Kaiser Permanente all shared how their organizations are using AI to continue to innovate and improve the experience for all stakeholders.

All of the speakers emphasized how listening to the wants and challenges of customers, users, clinicians and patients is the most important place to start when deciding if and how to implement AI.

Google COO Francis deSouza told Newsweek’s Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Cunningham that “every part of a company is going to be touched by AI,” so executives need a strategy.

“A successful employee in any company will be viable in every function, plus AI,” he said. “And so companies need to create sort of skilling programs and training to make sure that their employees are comfortable with what’s out there. It will also place a premium on skills like curiosity [and] willingness to experiment, because things change so quickly that we need a workforce that is willing to be curious about what’s out there. It also plays a premium on making sure that employees are responsible about how AI can be used.”

To read more about the live coverage of day one and to follow along for the rest of the summit, check out Newsweek’s AI Impact Summit live blog.

Live coverage will resume on Tuesday at 9:00 am PST.