Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. Well, our audience
Speaker 1: is very familiar with our next guest. He was the
Speaker 1: CEO of Google for a decade as well as executive chairman.
Speaker 1: He's a philanthropist. He's also the co founder of Schmidt Futures,
Speaker 1: and he's the he's the co author of a new book.
Speaker 1: It's called The Age of AI and Our Human Nature.
Speaker 1: Eric Schmidt joins us now on the phone from New
Speaker 1: York City. Eric, how are you? Um, thank you and
Speaker 1: I'm great. I'm so glad to see things going so
Speaker 1: well in the market. Yeah, I mean it's it's wild
Speaker 1: at six, the sixth day of record or sixth day
Speaker 1: I should say higher in a row for the SMP
Speaker 1: five hundred. Uh. Hey, let's talk about the book and
Speaker 1: the Age of AI and Our Human Future. You co
Speaker 1: wrote it with Henry Kissinger as well as Daniel Huttenlocker,
Speaker 1: the inaugural dean of the M. I. T. Schwartzman College
Speaker 1: of Computing. Explain how this book came about. Well, Dr
Speaker 1: Kissinger when he was in college, which was before all
Speaker 1: of us were born seventy five years ago wrote his
Speaker 1: undergraduate thesis on Kant and content invented this whole theory
Speaker 1: of whether objects were real or how did we perceive them?
Speaker 1: And he had been interested in how virtual worlds would emerge,
Speaker 1: although he couldn't articulate it the way we do it today.
Speaker 1: And when he visited Google and then subsequently talked to
Speaker 1: some of the AI folks, in particular a guy named Demostatibus,
Speaker 1: he realized that we're busy building the world that he
Speaker 1: thought about, but we're building it as technologists and without
Speaker 1: the basis of any kind of philosophy. So he set
Speaker 1: out with myself and Dan and a few others to
Speaker 1: kind of think through how do we address these technologies.
Speaker 1: And we concluded, and this is the headline, is that
Speaker 1: this change in the next five to ten years is
Speaker 1: the beginning of an ethical change in human history, similar
Speaker 1: to the Age of Reformation, where the age of reason
Speaker 1: excuse me, where we went from the age of faith
Speaker 1: where people basically just believe that whatever God said was
Speaker 1: correct versus the notion of having reason, and that the
Speaker 1: world where we're going to have ourselves and then inanimate
Speaker 1: non human intelligence is helping us is a very different
Speaker 1: world than the one we're in today, and bridge the
Speaker 1: gap between the world we're in today and the world
Speaker 1: we're heading into where AI is a bigger part of it.
Speaker 1: Because you know, when I think about a I I
Speaker 1: struggled to think about how it will transform my day
Speaker 1: to day life. So if we go down that path,
Speaker 1: you know, five, ten, even more years into the future,
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you see this shaping the world
Speaker 1: around us? Well, most people when they think about are
Speaker 1: they think of a killer robot. I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: say that, but yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not talking about that.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is that you will have assistance. Today,
Speaker 1: you have an assistant in the form of Google UM,
Speaker 1: you have recommendation engines and so forth. Those are all
Speaker 1: AI powered by the way that you translations and so forth.
Speaker 1: That all works very well. What will happen in the
Speaker 1: next five or ten years is you're going to have
Speaker 1: conversational systems that are human life that you're can ask
Speaker 1: questions and can make recommendations and more importantly, generate new
Speaker 1: things UM. In our book, we talk about the h
Speaker 1: the achievement of AlphaGo, where computers developed new game strategies
Speaker 1: for a game that have been played by humans for
Speaker 1: two thousand private or years, that had never been discovered
Speaker 1: by humans. We highlight the discovery of a new antibiotic.
Speaker 1: They could never have been done without using superhuman supercomputer
Speaker 1: analysis with human collaboration to look through all the choices
Speaker 1: to find a new antibiotic that saves that saves lives.
Speaker 1: And we also talk about these new language models, which
Speaker 1: are these immense systems where we build them and that
Speaker 1: we don't know what they know and what they really think.
Speaker 1: And it's called GPP three. These are the beginning platforms
Speaker 1: of a transformation of our the world around us. So
Speaker 1: the answer for you, specifically your report, Uh, you're you're
Speaker 1: in the news, You're inundated with information. Everyone is going
Speaker 1: to be pushing more and more stuff to you. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be inundated. You're gonna need a digital assistant. It
Speaker 1: will help you prioritize what you what you need to
Speaker 1: do in your work as well as your whole life. Okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds better than a killer robot. Absolutely, So to
Speaker 1: that end, you write in the preface along with your
Speaker 1: co author, is that the three of you differ to
Speaker 1: the extent in which you're optimistic about AI. Where do
Speaker 1: you fall in that? Of the three of us, I'm
Speaker 1: the more most optimistic, I think because in my world
Speaker 1: and my experience, we've we have these enormous opportunities with
Speaker 1: enormous down side, and somehow we muddle through. Um. If
Speaker 1: I told you the social media would become the primary
Speaker 1: attention source and information source for the most of the world,
Speaker 1: you'd say, great. What I didn't realize when we did
Speaker 1: social media it would also be used to manipulated elections
Speaker 1: and manipulate people through falsehood and misinformation and so forth. Um,
Speaker 1: we're working on the ladder. So when this next generation
Speaker 1: of much smarter systems come along, we better have a
Speaker 1: notion of what their ethics are. What are they promoting
Speaker 1: When you put one of these things with your kid
Speaker 1: who's obviously developmentally vulnerable. What happened If the thing has
Speaker 1: a hidden bug in it, like it's slightly racist, or
Speaker 1: it has the wrong values. What's all that says something inappropriate?
Speaker 1: Do you really want your child exposed to that in
Speaker 1: such an important role where this is the child's best
Speaker 1: friend because they rely on them. This is an experiment
Speaker 1: in human existence that we have are now running that
Speaker 1: we've never run before. We've never had a technology that
Speaker 1: was both imprecise, dynamic emergence and learning. It's learning while
Speaker 1: your kid is using it. Well, let's get right back
Speaker 1: to Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO and chairman, also
Speaker 1: the co founder of Schmidt Futures. He's also the co author,
Speaker 1: along with Dr Henry Kissinger and Daniel Hutton Locker, of
Speaker 1: the Age of AI and Our Human Future. Eric, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the metaverse and the context of
Speaker 1: last week's rebranding of Facebook. Now Facebook is known as
Speaker 1: Meta Platforms, Inc. Mark Zuckerberg said last week it's now
Speaker 1: a metaverse first company. Indeed, if you open up Instagram now,
Speaker 1: it says instead of saying Instagram by Facebook, it says
Speaker 1: Instagram by Meta. What is the relationship between AI and
Speaker 1: the metaverse? Well, the metaverse needs to be defined, you know.
Speaker 1: As you know, the term was coined by Neil Stevenson
Speaker 1: in a famous science fiction book. And most of us
Speaker 1: think that the metaverse is a world where sort of
Speaker 1: similar to the movie Ready Player, one where you would
Speaker 1: move into a digital world that's everyone's smarter, more beautiful, faster,
Speaker 1: it's more fun and it's really enjoyable. Facebook has not
Speaker 1: built that product yet and so we have to assume
Speaker 1: that that's their direction. But it seems to me that
Speaker 1: naming the changing the name of all of Facebook, which
Speaker 1: is a hundred thousand people in an enormous business based
Speaker 1: on products have not been announced yet, is a pretty
Speaker 1: big decision. And we'll see, let's see how the products
Speaker 1: play out. Yeah, I can't wait to see how that
Speaker 1: plays out at Facebook now. Meta and I love the
Speaker 1: movie Ready Player one. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: want to live there though, but it's interesting following this
Speaker 1: announcement from Meta Facebook. I mean, you've seen Microsoft detailed
Speaker 1: their plans for the metaverse or their ambitions there. Uh
Speaker 1: Nividia Sword today after Wells Fargo said that there's an
Speaker 1: opportunity for that company in the metaverse. Is this a
Speaker 1: new buzzword? I mean, are we going to see every
Speaker 1: company trying to jump on this bandwagon? Well, I think
Speaker 1: I would rather have them go back to Hype AI
Speaker 1: because AI is to transform their businesses in an enormous way. Um,
Speaker 1: what I think of as a meta versus something very
Speaker 1: interesting and very powerful. It's a natural next step. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been involved in various projects associated it for more
Speaker 1: than thirty years. Perhaps it's time has come. UM. I
Speaker 1: was in the media last night where one person said
Speaker 1: that that what will happen is Facebook will use its
Speaker 1: significant cash and engineering resources to build this world using
Speaker 1: its identity services and so for and so on, but
Speaker 1: that there will be a competitor set of metaverses that
Speaker 1: will be based on technology known as Web three, which
Speaker 1: is the crypto platform, which has different different economics, different
Speaker 1: power structures, different leaders. I think we don't know who
Speaker 1: the leaders are going to be. What's exciting about this
Speaker 1: metaverse idea once again the marketing ahead of the reality,
Speaker 1: is that it's another example of how the industry moves forward.
Speaker 1: In our book, we spent an awful lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about this new set of platforms that are being
Speaker 1: built in AI and their impact on society. The metaphors.
Speaker 1: If it is successful and if we understand ultimately understand
Speaker 1: what it is, UM may have huge impact on our
Speaker 1: education systems and the way we live and so forth.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean Facebook will be the leader, but probably
Speaker 1: somebody will be the leader in that space. Well speak
Speaker 1: of Facebook in the wake of Facebook's brand too meta platforms.
Speaker 1: A lot of commentary is focus around the Facebook brand
Speaker 1: and the idea that it's under scrutiny from Democrats and
Speaker 1: Republicans over what it did in terms of censoring or
Speaker 1: not censoring content are promoting hate speech on the platform.
Speaker 1: Our audience is very familiar with the articles that came
Speaker 1: out as part of the Facebook papers recently. Eric, I'm
Speaker 1: curious because you're widely viewed as coming in as the
Speaker 1: quote adult in the room when it came to Google.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if if Facebook needs an adult to come
Speaker 1: in right now. Well, in fairness to Mark and his team,
Speaker 1: they're now proper adults. Maybe they were, you know, young
Speaker 1: when they were founding the company, but they've they've earned
Speaker 1: the right to drive in the way they are. I
Speaker 1: think we can debate their decisions. One way to understand
Speaker 1: the problem in social media is you want to maximize revenue,
Speaker 1: and by maximizing revenue, the best thing to do is
Speaker 1: to maximize engagement. By maximizing engagement, the best way to
Speaker 1: do that is with outrage. So guess what you get
Speaker 1: more were outrage Because outrage drives drives attention. Attention drives revenue,
Speaker 1: and the companies are seeking that, and then the AI
Speaker 1: systems are optimized for that. You shouldn't be surprised we
Speaker 1: got what we got. Um When I was CEO of Google,
Speaker 1: we faced similar choices that we made a decision, which
Speaker 1: was a collective decision that we would take some of
Speaker 1: the games to revenue, but some of it to quality.
Speaker 1: That's a different company's decision. If I were doing Facebook today,
Speaker 1: I would have a hard decision in front of me,
Speaker 1: which is I want to improve the quality of my
Speaker 1: users experience and frankly, peddling misinformation and manipulating people is
Speaker 1: not a high quality outcome. It got to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to address that. They don't. They will eventually
Speaker 1: face some form of regulations. Eric Schmith, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on Bloomberg Business Week. His new book,
Speaker 1: The Age of AI and Our Human Future, co written
Speaker 1: with Henry Kissinger and Daniel Hutton Locker. Eric Schmidt the
Speaker 1: co founder of Schmidt Futures and former Google CEO and
Speaker 1: chairman