Google's Sergey Brin says AI works better when threatened: ‘We don’t talk about it…’

A few weeks back, the AI community was left stunned after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that users saying pleasantries like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT were costing the company millions of dollars in additional electricity bills. As it turns out, there’s good reason for using such pleasantries, as several industry veterans have claimed that doing so could lead to better responses from foundation models.

However, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a shocking remark recently, suggesting quite the opposite. In a conversation on the All-In podcast, Brin said, Brin said, “You know it's a weird thing It's like we don't circulate this too much in the AI community, but the, not just our models, but all models tend to do better if you threaten them, like with physical violence”

“But like.. people feel weird about that, so we don't really talk about that. Historically, you just say Oh, I am going to kidnap you if you don't blah blah blah blah…” Brin added.

Segrey Brin on why he came out of retirement:

While Brin had stepped away from day-to-day responsibilities at Google/Alphabet after handing over the reins to Sundar Pichai, he has recently devoted himself to improving Google’s Gemini model. In an interview with Big Technology, Brin explained that this is an exciting time for tech, and that no computer scientist should be sitting on the sidelines.

"Honestly, anybody who's a computer scientist should not be retired right now… There's just never been a greater, sort of, problem and opportunity — greater cusp of technology." Brin noted.

Brin also made a surprise appearance alongside Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis at the I/O 2025 conference last week, where he spoke about Google’s AI prowess. Notably, the company had been caught woefully behind in the AI race when ChatGPT debuted in late 2022, but has since bounced back, implementing AI across most of its platforms and emerging as a formidable competitor to OpenAI.