Google’s former chief executive has warned that artificial intelligence could be used by rogue states such as North Korea, Iran and Russia to “harm innocent people”.
Eric Schmidt, who held senior posts at Google from 2001 to 2017, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that those countries and terrorists could adopt and misuse the technology to develop weapons to create “a bad biological attack from some evil person”.
The tech billionaire said: “The real fears that I have are not the ones that most people talk about AI – I talk about extreme risk.
“Think about North Korea, or Iran, or even Russia, who have some evil goal. This technology is fast enough for them to adopt that they could misuse it and do real harm.”
In reference to the head of the al-Qaida terrorist group who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in 2001, he said: “I’m always worried about the Osama bin Laden scenario, where you have some truly evil person who takes over some aspect of our modern life and uses it to harm innocent people.”
Schmidt agreed with the US export controls introduced by the former US president Joe Biden, which restricted the sale of the microchips that power the most advanced AI system to 18 countries to slow adversaries’ progress on AI research.
He urged government oversight on private tech companies that are developing AI models, but added that over-regulation could stifle innovation. “It’s really important that governments understand what we’re doing and keep their eye on us,” he said.
“My experience with the tech leaders is that they do have an understanding of the impact they’re having, but they might make a different values judgment than the government would make.”
Schmidt was speaking from Paris, where the two-day AI Action summit finished on Tuesday with the US and UK refusing to sign an agreement on “inclusive” AI. The declaration was signed by 57 countries, including India and China, the EU and the African Union.
The UK declined to back the joint communique because it failed to provide enough “practical clarity” or address “harder questions” about national safety.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, has said that regulation would “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off”.
Schmidt said Europe’s more restricted approach meant “that the AI revolution, which is the most important revolution in my opinion since electricity, is not going to be invented in Europe”.
Separately, Schmidt, who was head of Google when the company bought Android, which now makes the most-used mobile phone operating system in the world, said he supported initiatives to keep phones out of schools.
“The situation with children is particularly disturbing to me,” he said. “I think smartphones with a kid can be safe, they just need to be moderated … we can all agree that children should be protected from the bad of the online world.”
Schmidt has also supported proposals for a ban on social media for children under 16. He said: “Why would we run such a large, uncontrolled experiment on the most important people in the world, which is the next generation?”
