Eric Schmidt Says Elon Musk Is 'Exactly Wrong' About AI (techcrunch.com)

At the VivaTech conference in Paris, Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt was asked about Elon Musk's warnings about AI. He responded by saying: "I think Elon is exactly wrong. He doesn't understand the benefits that this technology will provide to making every human being smarter. The fact of the matter is that AI and machine learning are so fundamentally good for humanity." TechCrunch reports: He acknowledged that there are risks around how the technology might be misused, but he said they're outweighed by the benefits: "The example I would offer is, would you not invent the telephone because of the possible misuse of the telephone by evil people? No, you would build the telephone and you would try to find a way to police the misuse of the telephone."

After wryly observing that Schmidt had just given the journalists in the audience their headlines, interviewer (and former Publicis CEO) Maurice Levy asked how AI and public policy can be developed so that some groups aren't "left behind." Schmidt replied that government should fund research and education around these technologies. "As [these new solutions] emerge, they will benefit all of us, and I mean the people who think they're in trouble, too," he said. He added that data shows "workers who work in jobs where the job gets more complicated get higher wages -- if they can be helped to do it." Schmidt also argued that contrary to concerns that automation and technology will eliminate jobs, "The embracement of AI is net positive for jobs." In fact, he said there will be "too many jobs" -- because as society ages, there won't be enough people working and paying taxes to fund crucial services. So AI is "the best way to make them more productive, to make them smarter, more scalable, quicker and so forth."

Comments

So he's disagreeing by agreeing?

[Rei]

He acknowledged that there are risks around how the technology might be misused, but he said they're outweighed by the benefits:"The example I would offer is, would you not invent the telephone because of the possible misuse of the telephone by evil people? No, you would build the telephone and you would try to find a way to police the misuse of the telephone."

That's pretty much the exact same thing Musk argues, so I'm confused by how this is a disagreement. Is someone interpreting Musk as trying to hinder the development of AI? Is that why he employs a huge team of neural net developers at Tesla? Why he founded OpenAI? And Neuralink?

Both sides are right

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon didnâ(TM)t say AI is evil. Schmidt is misrepresenting him. Why else would Elon start Open AI? Elon is wants a framework to use AI responsibly thatâ(TM)s all.... put his warnings the right context.

They both agree AI is the future and are right.

But Schmidt obviously do not want regulation and restraints on Googleâ(TM)s business model. Unfettered access to your personal and behaviour data to train the AI.

Schmidt is being very Evil by playing the game this way.

Re:Yes

[arth1]

I think both of them are wrong too, but for other reasons.
The problem I see is that the smarter our helpers get, the dumber it allows us to be. Just look at computers for a good example of that. As they became ubiquitous and smarter on the inside, with user interfaces dumbed down for "everybody" to use, there was no longer a need for people to learn anything. Or calculators - people don't feel they need to understand even simple maths anymore, because there's a calculator (or calculator app, or google's built-in calculator) to do everything for them.
I truly fear that as the helpers get smarter, we get dumber. Only a few people will need to be smart enough to program them, but even that is dumbed down with higher and higher levels of abstractions.