Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet and Google, lays out the case for AI optimism, a projected $4 trillion lift to U.S. GDP, Nobel Prize–winning breakthroughs like AlphaFold, and gains in cybersecurity and healthcare, in conversation with IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna.
From there, the conversation turns to one of AI's most contested questions: energy. Porat breaks down why data centers aren't the primary driver behind rising electricity prices, how Google is investing in added capacity and demand response to offset its footprint, and why the U.S. risks falling...
What Ruth Porat said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet, expressed optimism about AI, citing a $4 trillion GDP upside in the US, with 80% of small businesses seeing revenue and profit gains. She highlighted AlphaFold's Nobel Prize-winning protein folding breakthrough as a scientific advance. Addressing energy concerns, she noted data centers use 4% of the grid, expected to rise to 12%, but argued they help slow electricity price growth. Porat detailed Google's commitments: adding energy capacity (nuclear, batteries, solar, wind), demand response creating one gigawatt of capacity, paying for infrastructure, and an energy affordability fund. She mentioned an electrician training program and that each data center job creates nine additional jobs. Porat stressed the US underinvestment in grid infrastructure, citing 100 gigawatts available with modernization, and that China built 80 times more transmission capacity in the last decade, framing this as a national security matter.
Key takeaways
AI could add $4 trillion to US GDP over several years, with 80% of small businesses seeing revenue and profit gains.
Data centers use 4% of the grid today, expected to rise to 12%, but help slow electricity price growth.
Google created one gigawatt of incremental capacity via demand response, moving workloads on hot or cold days.
China built 80 times more transmission capacity than the US in the last 10 years, a national security concern.
Let's just think about all that we're thinking about nowadays. We're thinking about technology, we think about AI, we think about capital, we think about jobs. And if you look at Ruth's background, who better to sort of have this conversation with around this topic? And there's a lot being written nowadays about both AI and about technology, the outsized role that these are playing in almost every industry. So, Ruth, can I begin with why should we have optimism around these topics?
Great. Well, first, it's so wonderful to be back here. I always love coming to New York, but looking around this room and seeing so many old friends, it's an absolute treat and great to be with you always, Arvind. So, the upside from AI, when we look at it, I think at a high level, there are four really profound areas that lead to optimism. Number one is the economic upside. In the US alone, it's estimated that the upside is about four trillion to GDP over the next several years. And we're already seeing with small businesses that are applying AI to whether it's how they reach out to customers, how they engage with customers, how they manage chain, etc. They're seeing 80% of them are seeing an uplift in revenue and profitability. The second that I think is really exciting is advancing science, a place you and I spend a host of time. And probably one of the best examples of that is a colleague of mine who won the Nobel Prize for something hopefully many have already heard about — AlphaFold, which is about protein folding, and it has been described as one of the greatest contributions to drug discovery in our lifetime. What they did is they said they wanted to take on a 50-year grand challenge on protein folding, which is sort of the insight to life. And when they started on that journey, somebody challenged the head of our AI lab, Demis Hassabis, and said, 'How can you take on this challenge? It takes four years for a PhD student just to diagram one protein. Just one, and there are 200 million out there. How is it possible?' And his answer was, 'Why not?' And they went on that journey, and within four years, not only had they cracked the code, but won the Nobel Prize on this. And if there's one thing I think I would want to leave anybody with that I quote a lot at Google, it's with AI, that question 'Why not?' is something we should each be asking ourselves about anything that to date has been intractable, because it lets you break through it. The others obviously around cybersecurity, where we both spend a lot of time. And the final area is really better delivery of healthcare, education, addressing food security. We were talking about a whole host of really important social issues that we can now address as a result of AI. That aggregate portfolio to me is the reason we should be optimistic about what AI, responsibly executed, can deliver for society.
I do think that people should note what Ruth began with. Four and a half trillion, even if out there in a few years, let's call it GDP here is 40. A 10-point increase, which you can reinvest back in the country and in an individual company or into the citizens — it's massive. If you go look at developmental economics, that 10 points is all the difference between breakaway and kind of not being. So, while there is a lot of optimism, there's also people out there that are worried about some of the downsides of AI. One of the big ones that gets talked about all the time is, 'Hey, it's causing my energy bills to go up,' or all the data centers are fundamental cause of this. Could you help demystify that a little bit, Ruth, because I know you guys do a lot of work on this topic, and you have made investments.
3 more exchanges in this transcript
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Porat, R. (2026, June 24). Google CIO Ruth Porat on AI Optimism, Data Centers, and the U.S.-China Energy Race [Interview transcript]. The Economic Club of New York. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1039499/
MLA
Ruth Porat. "Google CIO Ruth Porat on AI Optimism, Data Centers, and the U.S.-China Energy Race." The Economic Club of New York, 24 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1039499/.
BibTeX
@misc{porat2026_1039499,
author = {Ruth Porat},
title = {Google CIO Ruth Porat on AI Optimism, Data Centers, and the U.S.-China Energy Race},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Economic Club of New York. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1039499/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
