Google exec: Artificial intelligence film death scenarios 'one to two decades away'

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has also voiced fears over the potential threat AI technology poses. "If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea," he said last year. However Mr Schmidt argued that the benefits AI brings to technology and medical advances outweigh concerns about the negative effects - and he insisted "humans will remain in charge of [AI] for the rest of time". He said: "Everyone immediately then wants to talk about all the movie-inspired death scenarios, and I can confidently predict to you that they are one to two decades away. "So let's worry about them, but let's worry about them in a while." He went on to say that the technology had major flaws and would always be within the control of humans. He said: "I want to remind everyone these technologies [AI] have serious errors in them and they should not be used with life-critical decisions.