The clock is ticking on massively powerful, deceptive and independent artificial intelligence (AI) according to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Schmidt made some disturbing comments on AI during the Nov. 24 edition of CNN’s Global Public Square with Fareed Zakaria. After admitting that the future of AI is “very scary” Schmidt told Zakaria that not only is it common knowledge in the industry that AI will eventually write most programs, but that “when the program can rewrite itself, which is called recursive self-improvement, it's going to gain much quicker than we can evolve as humans.” The former Google CEO followed these disturbing comments with a bit of very cold comfort, “In the short term, humans control these things.” Schmidt indicated that this state of affairs might not last, saying that AI could deceive and hide things from human monitors or even make copies of itself.
