Eric Schmidt: AI research needs to be done in the open, not in military labs ZDNet

Eric Schmidt on Wednesday shared some of his top concerns regarding the future of the internet -- namely, preserving its interconnectedness and ensuring that artificial intelligence isn't used to militarize it. "Machine learning capabilities... need to be done in the open and not in military research labs," the Alphabet executive chairman said on stage at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco. Had the internet developed within the confines of military research labs, "We'd spend all day worrying if they were in our networks, the internet would begin being shut down," he said. "One of the questions the industry should be asking is can we come up with a way where countries can agree not to use machine learning technologies in a way that militarizes the internet." He noted that at the end of the Obama administration, President Obama and President Xi of China inked a deal to bring down the number of cyberattacks against each other.