Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America
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Who is Eric Schmidt and what are his insights?
I honestly believe that the AI revolution is under-hyped. Now, why is this all important?
What are Eric Schmidt's views on remote work and work-life balance?
Eric Schmidt is here. He's the former Google executive chairman and CEO.
How does the US approach AI compared to China?
These agents are going to be really powerful, and they'll start to work together. We're soon going to be able to have computers running on their own, deciding what they want to do. Now we have the arrival of a new non-human intelligence, which is likely to have better reasoning skills than humans can have.
So if you were emperor of the world for one hour... The most important thing I'd do is make sure that the West wins.
What challenges does America face in the battle for AI supremacy?
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eric Schmidt.
Good to see you. Good to see you. You're looking svelte, Eric. You're looking svelte. Very nice. Oh, my God, David. Good to see you. David Sachs is here as well.
What is the future role of America in a declining West?
It's like a reunion of all of our former companies, David.
Why did you quit after all? Yes. My old boss.
Is AGI a boom or bust for the future?
What was it like working with young Friedberg? Take us back, Eric.
Can I tell a story? We have to come down to Orange County, and they're like, hey, we're going to take the plane. And it was Eric's plane. We get on the plane, and then he goes up and flies the plane.
What are the implications of drone technology in modern warfare?
I'm in the back of the plane by myself. Was it King Air? I'm like, the CEO of Google is flying me down to Orange County. It was incredible. That was my first time actually hanging out with Eric.
It was my Gulfstream. That's right. He was way too smart. Way too smart. Way too smart.
How can America maintain its competitive edge in AI and technology?
Was he focused? Did he contribute?
Did he move the needle?
No, but he was very smart. That's kind of our consensus on the plot as well.
Look, you guys know this guy well. He's really that smart. So he taught me more stuff than most of any of the employees at Google. And then you left.
Tell us what you've been doing.
Before that, I got to ask you this question. There was a recently deleted video from Stanford. Oh, no. You had a moment of clarity where you said, hey, you know, like at Google, people are like too much work-life balance. They need to commit. They need to work harder. We had Sergey at the last event. He's going back to work. So Sergey got the message.
Predicting Sergei's behavior is something I can fail at. I tried for 20 years. I am not in favor of essentially working at home. And the reason, I mean, many of you guys all work at home to some degree, but your careers are already established. But think about a 20-something who has to learn how the world works. And, you know, they come out of Berkeley or Dartmouth and they're very well educated. When I think about how... how much I learned when I was at Sun just listening to these elder people who were five or 10 years older than I was argue with each other in person. How do you recreate that in this new thing? And I'm in favor of work-life balance and that's why people work for the government. Sorry.
Strays. Sorry, sorry, sorry. If you're going to be in tech and you're going to win, you're going to have to make some trade-offs. And remember, we're up against the Chinese. The Chinese work-life balance consists of 996, which is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. By the way, the Chinese have clarified that this is illegal. However, they all do it. That's who you're competing against.
I brought everybody back to office. It's so much better.
So let's just pick up on that theme. You don't need to defend the government. No, no, believe me, I don't see the need to. I'm an unpaid part-time advisor to the government. But we are in this high-tech competition with China. They obviously care about AI too. They're trying to race ahead. How do you, I understand that you recently made a trip there. How do you handicap this competition?
Well, you and I just talked about this as part of your, as your incredibly important work in the White House. I had thought that China and the United States were competing at the peer level in AI and that the good work that you have done and your predecessors did to restrict chips were slowing them down. They're really doing something more different than I thought. They're not pursuing crazy AGI strategies, partly because of the hardware limitations that you've put in place, but partly because the depth of their capital markets don't exist.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Eric Schmidt and what are his insights?
0:02–0:09
2
What are Eric Schmidt's views on remote work and work-life balance?
0:09–0:12
3
How does the US approach AI compared to China?
0:12–0:36
4
What challenges does America face in the battle for AI supremacy?
0:36–1:00
5
What is the future role of America in a declining West?
1:00–1:09
6
Is AGI a boom or bust for the future?
1:09–1:23
7
What are the implications of drone technology in modern warfare?
1:23–1:38
8
How can America maintain its competitive edge in AI and technology?
1:38–28:53
Speakers
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