In a recent podcast episode of ‘The Diary of a CEO’, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and co-founder of Schmidt Sciences, took full responsibility for Google’s failure to capitalise on social media.
“There are moments at Google where we had control over an industry but failed to execute effectively; the clearest example is social media,” he said.
“Around the time Facebook was founded, we had a system called Orkut that was truly fascinating. Despite doing many things right, we missed that opportunity, and I take responsibility for it,” Schmidt further said.
Talking about his early days, Schmidt shared, “Moore’s Law, which is this notion of accelerating density of chips, has defined the wealth creation, the career creation, and the company creation in my life. So I can be called lucky because I was born with an interest in something which was about to explode and when…everything happens together, everyone gets swept up in it.”
Google’s Mission
According to Schmidt, Google’s mission is to organise all the information in the world. He mentioned that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had initially started with a web search.
“Deep Mind here in Britain, is essentially the first company to really see the AI opportunity, and pretty much all of the things you’ve seen from AI in the last decade have come from people who are either at DeepMind or competing with DeepMind,” Schmidt added.
Schmidt’s Biggest Fear about AI
Revealing his biggest fear about AI, Schmidt said, “My actual fear is we’re not going to adopt it fast enough to solve the problems that affect everybody.”
He further explained that AI can provide personalised education tailored to children’s languages and cultures. It can also assist doctors with advanced decision-making tools that offer optimal treatments that consider local contexts like insurance or inventory.
“Human potential would be so great that it would change everything…It would establish a level playing field of knowledge and opportunity at a global level that has been the dream for decades,” Schmidt added.
Is AI the End of Humanity?
When asked if there was a chance that humanity would end, Schmidt clarified, “No…It’s much harder to eliminate all of humanity than you would think.”
Schmidt said that according to experts he has worked with on scenarios like biological attacks, it would take far more than a single horrific pandemic to wipe out humanity completely.
Notably, Schmidt is also the author of bestselling books such as, ‘The New Digital Age’ and ‘Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit’.
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