Eric Schmidt Or Elon Musk, Who Is Right About Future Artificial Intelligence?

Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet and now its technical adviser, joined the list of people Friday who oppose Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's views about the future of artificial intelligence. Musk has warned that AI, if unregulated, will eventually become an existentialist threat to humanity, and his opinion has both famous supporters, like the late Stephen Hawking, and dissenters like Schmidt. Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Friday, Schmidt's comments were in response to a question about Musk's dire warnings about AI. "I think Elon is exactly wrong. The fact of the matter is that AI and machine learning are so fundamentally good for humanity," Schmidt said, adding he shared Musk's concerns about the potential for misuse of technology. Alphabet's former executive chairman Eric Schmidt speaks on the phone during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland Jan. 24, 2018.