Eric Schmidt's AI dream? A 'Not-Eric' to do his bidding

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, on Monday gave a glimpse into his dream of owning an aide de camp powered by artificial intelligence. In Schmidt's vision, there would be co-existence between "Eric" (himself) and "Not-Eric" ("this digital thing that helps me"), Bloomberg reports. Schmidt, who spoke at a conference in New York, follows in the footsteps of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who just last week outlined his next personal challenge: writing the software code for his own AI butler to help him around the house and office. Both Alphabet and Facebook have made no secret of their interest in developing technologies that perform complex thinking tasks. But what we can glean from insights into the desires of their leaders is the extent to which they believe AI will impact our daily lives.