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

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.