Eric Schmidt On AI

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on Technology in 2016

The next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) promises to have an impact as big as the mobile revolution or the Internet revolution before that. ...... It can detect patterns that humans can neither see nor anticipate. English speakers can make phone or video calls to speakers of Hindi or Chinese. But the next leap will be Inventive AI—machines trained on a given data set that can tackle a wider range of problems. As society grapples with the increasing volume and complexity of information, more-flexible AI will play a key role in helping us. Eventually it will be possible to give a computer unstructured data—say, spreadsheets used to manage business records—and receive quality advice on improving operations. All it will take is a training data set that is large enough, computers that are big enough and algorithms that are adaptable enough. ..... AI does not have the complex emotions that guide human decisionmaking, so it could avoid most if not all of these inherent biases. .....

Under our control, it can take the drudgery out of work and free up many more hours for creative pursuits. And applied collaboratively, AI could help bring about solutions to the world’s most complex problems.