Pausing AI development would 'simply benefit China,' warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

• Eric Schmidt said a six-month pause on AI development would "simply benefit China."
• The ex-Google CEO told the Australian Financial Review that concerns about AI "could be understated."
• Instead of a pause, he said leaders should collectively discuss appropriate guardrails "ASAP."

Eric Schmidt says the six-month moratorium on AI development supported by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and other tech leaders would "simply benefit China" and called instead for tighter regulation.

The former Google CEO told the Australian Financial Review he was worried about the rapid development of AI and that "concerns could be understated."

"I think ... things could be worse than people are saying," he said, noting that as large language models get bigger they have "emergent behaviour we don't understand."

The use of generative AI has exploded in recent months with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard, and Microsoft's AI-powered Bing, as well as image-generating platforms such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

People have been using generative AI in both their personal and professional lives to write essays, think up recipes, summarize emails, publish articles, and craft résumés and cover letters. As well as saving time and conveying information concisely, Bill Gates says AI could also transform healthcare and education.

But ethical concerns about the technology are mounting after examples show it can plagiarize material, develop bias, argue with users, and even made up allegations.

Deepfake images showing former President Donald Trump being arrested circulated on social media, a scammer used AI-generated text and images in an attempt to dupe an Insider reporter, and ChatGPT even gave tips on how to murder people.

Musk and Wozniak, the Apple cofounder, were among the tech CEOs, software engineers, and professors who signed an open letter last week calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI development.

"The question is what is the right answer," Schmidt told the Financial Review. "I'm not in favour of a six-month pause because it will simply benefit China."

He established the Special Competitive Studies Project think-tank in 2021, which aims make recommendations on how to strengthen the US's long-term competitiveness amid the rise in emerging technology including AI.

Instead of a pause, leaders should instead collectively discuss appropriate guardrails "ASAP," Schmidt said. Researchers should only release AI programs with "some kind of mitigation for things that it could do that are negative," he said.

Schmidt said that if the industry didn't develop safeguards, politicians would have to step in.

"I think today the government's response would be clumsy because there are very few people in government who understand this stuff," Schmidt told the Australian newspaper. "So I'm in favour of letting the industry try to get its act together. This is a case where you don't rush in unless you understand what you're doing."