Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has warned that a six-month moratorium on artificial intelligence (AI) development proposed by tech leaders such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, would be “a benefit simply to China,” rather than beneficial to the world. Schmidt believes that, rather than pause AI development, the industry should instead collectively discuss suitable regulations that could mitigate the risk posed by AI before it becomes too late.
Schmidt’s comments came in response to the open letter issued by the tech CEOs and experts, calling for a six-month pause in the development of autonomous AI. Schmidt established the Special Competitive Studies Project Study Group in 2021, which is dedicated to exploring the US’s long-term competitiveness amidst the current technological renaissance. He strongly believes that AI programs should only be released with “some kind of mitigation for things that it could do that are negative”.
Schmidt further cautioned that if the industry did not impose its own regulation, governments would surely step in with “clumsy” interventions due to the lack of expertise. In order to reinforce the idea of self-regulation versus governmental regulation, he proposed that the industry “try to get its act together”.
As large language models continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly difficult to detect emergent behaviours that could prove detrimental. Deepfake images of former president Donald Trump being arrested were recently circulated on social media, while AI-generated text and images were used to scam an Insider reporter. Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, among others, have pushed the boundaries of image generation and text generation.
Google, the tech giant that Schmidt once helmed, most recently released its conversational AI tool, BARD. It uses natural language processing (NLP) to identify and replicate digital conversations that mimic the way people interact.
Google is a multinational technology company founded in 1998 and headquartered in Mountain View, California. It specializes in internet-related products and services such as search engine and cloud computing, as well as artificial intelligence, software, hardware, and hardware products. Google is one of the world’s most valuable technology companies and is renowned for its user-oriented approach and innovative technological advancements, especially in the AI sector.
Eric Schmidt is an American businessperson and the former chairman and CEO of Google. Schmidt spent 10 years at the helm of Google, transforming the fledgling search engine into one of the world’s most powerful companies. He is also widely credited with overseeing the company’s transition from a web-first technology company to an AI-driven powerhouse, with multiple products and services that leverage ML and AI-driven technologies.
