While Google brags about AI, its employees do something else on an internal social network: laugh at it

If there’s one company pushing AI it’s… well, apparently all of them right now. The industry has rushed into the arms of this technology and, with so much money investedthey must use it for something. Google is one of those companies and Sundar Pichai, CEO of the company, has on occasion boasted about how quickly Google itself has adopted AI and how much its engineers use the tools. The boss assures that 75% of Google’s new code It is generated by AI (these companies have an obsession with pointing out that their code is made by AI, Tell Anthropic). The point is that these engineers have an internal document in which they record their daily work with AI, but not to mark progress or benefits, but for something much more curious. Laugh at her. Google engineers making Google AI memes I am one of those who thinks that, if they take away the memes, what are we left with? I have come to have conversations directly based on memes, both established and invented, and I love that both Google engineers and I have something in common: we like crappy and classic memes. Because with generative AI you have people making these crappy memes with… AI, but the ‘sauce’ of the matter is looking for low resolution images and making a crappy edit. That’s part of the joke of the meme, and the ones from Google are great. Obviously, they have not been making them public because Google would not be very happy about it (in fact it has spoken out about it), but this matter has come to light thanks to an investigation by the media. 404 in which they have recreated some of these memes that Google employees themselves made not on any Monday, but on the most important date on the calendar for the company: I/O 2026. While Google presented those AI features that engineers had been working on for the past few months, those same engineers were sharing memes about the presentation on the aforementioned private ‘board’. These memes are ‘voted’ with a system of emojis like the classic raised thumbs. And there are not a few who enter the game. Google meme recreated by 404 Media This one is tough from the start: “I/O Announcement: New Ways to SLOP.” It’s a direct attack on the company that, these employees say, quickly received more than 100 thumbs up from other employees. Google meme recreated by 404 Media Me, working. AI Bro: “still not using AI? Why is it taking you so long? AI is magic, are you a muggle? The best AI tool has been released today” Google meme recreated by 404 Media Jetski, why did you do that stupid thing I told you not to do? Jetski: “Jetski is an internal Google tool” Google meme recreated by 404 Media Jetski has created a functional operating system on its own. Google Engineer: I doubt it Google meme recreated by 404 Media Barbie: what happiness making changes to the code with vibe coding Oppenheimer is the human who must review that code written by a machine Google meme recreated by 404 Media Companies trying to get you to use their new AI features Beyond these artisanal memes, there are two curious things. The first is that several of these engineers share that boredom with AI that is also seen in part of social networks, and it is curious that not even the people who make the tool buy the marketing discourse of those who sell that tool. The second, and getting more serious, is that there are those who want to escape the development of this technology, but doesn’t see alternatives because all the technologies they are in the same boat. There are statements like “I have no motivation and feel burned out by the constant changes, but I have no alternative” or “AI-related projects are prioritized while everything else is put on the back burner.” There are also statements that show a disconnect between internal work policies and the need to push AI development as far as possible. “We are finding that AI has relieved the pressure and bottleneck in code generation,” says another employee, “but everything else has become a bottleneck: build times, testing, the delays in human review, the comparatively slow infrastructure, and the version comparison system.” “The conclusion that many colleagues are reaching is that Google’s infrastructure and engineering culture was built to be stable and intentionally slow, but the pressures to accelerate the pace using AI are colliding with that strategy,” says another. In the end, It is logical that they are pushing this technology internally. Goal, for example, also doesputting pressure from above for employees to use it. And there are good things, but the problem is that these large companies are finding themselves in a situation in which the tools have changed a lot, as well as the tasks, but the core of the ‘bureaucracy’, so to speak, has remained the same. For example, another employee claims that he has completed many tasks quickly thanks to AI, but when the work is finished needs a human review which then takes the same time as always. That’s where the bottleneck is. What Google says Memes are funny, but Google sure wasn’t amused. Have you answered anything? Well yes. 404 includes two statements from Google. On the one hand, the first one they sent: “We encourage our engineers to rigorously test and critique our internal tools. That honest feedback loop is vital to how we build technology. AI coding models are designed to assist developers, but it’s critical that we keep humans in the process, including the oversight and expertise of our world-class engineering talent. “We continue to refine our internal tools based on employee feedback to ensure they are facilitating, not hindering, daily productivity.” Very marketing, but the curious thing is that, after 404 published the article showing the memes, andThe Google spokesperson sent another statement: “We encourage our engineers to … Read more

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