The former chief executive of Google is worried artificial intelligence could be used by terrorists or “rogue states” to “harm innocent people.” Eric Schmidt told the BBC: “The real fears that I have are not the ones that most people talk about AI – I talk about extreme risk.”
The tech billionaire, who held senior posts at Google from 2001 to 2017, told the Today programme “North Korea, or Iran, or even Russia” could adopt and misuse the technology to create biological weapons.
He called for government oversight on private tech companies which are developing AI models, but warned over-regulation could stifle innovation.
Mr Schmidt agreed with US export controls on powerful microchips which power the most advanced AI systems. Before he left office, former US President Joe Biden restricted the export of microchips to all but 18 countries, in order to slow adversaries’ progress on AI research.
The decision could still be reversed by Donald Trump.
“Think about North Korea, or Iran, or even Russia, who have some evil goal,” Mr Schmidt said. “This technology is fast enough for them to adopt that they could misuse it and do real harm.”
He added AI systems, in the wrong hands, could be used to develop weapons to create “a bad biological attack from some evil person.”
“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,” he said.
Mr Schmidt proposed a balance between government oversight of AI development and over-regulation of the sector.
“The truth is that AI and the future is largely going to be built by private companies,” Mr Schmidt said. “It’s really important that governments understand what we’re doing and keep their eye on us.”
He added: “We’re not arguing that we should unilaterally be able to do these things without oversight, we think it should be regulated.”
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