Two top artificial intelligence experts--one an optimist and the other more alarmist about the technology's future--engaged in a spirited debate at the TIME100 Summit on Wednesday. Both Yoshua Bengio, founder and scientific director of Mila Quebec AI Institute, a scientific hub, and Eric Schmidt, chairman of the Special Competitive Studies Project and former Google CEO, agree that A.I. is poised to transform modern society. But as moderator Stephanie Ruhle, an MSNBC host, put it: "Yoshua believes that the risk of AI potentially putting us into extinction should be considered a global risk, like we look at pandemics and nuclear war. Eric is super, super excited about AI." Bengio's main concern with AI is the difficulty in ensuring that AI systems are used for their intended purpose and not something harmful. "We absolutely need to clear the fog; right now, scientists really have no idea" how to get AI to behave according to the norms, law and values of society.

In November 2019, the US government's National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), an influential body chaired by former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, warned that China was using artificial intelligence to "advance an autocratic agenda." Just two months earlier, Schmidt was also seeking potential personal connections to China's AI industry on a visit to Beijing, newly disclosed emails reveal. Separately, tax filings show that a nonprofit private foundation overseen by Schmidt and his wife contributed to a fund that feeds into a private equity firm that has made investments in numerous Chinese tech firms, including those in AI. When the NSCAI issued its full findings in 2021, Schmidt and the NSCAI's vice chairman said in a statement that "China's plans, resources, and progress should concern all Americans," and warned that "China's domestic use of AI is a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty." The 2019 email communications, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit research initiative that tracks tech industry influence, show staff at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic venture, asking NSCAI employees to help identify "possible engagements [Schmidt] might have on AI, in a personal capacity."

One of the biggest areas to watch, of course, will be generative AI, particularly how it changes social media, political campaigning, and the fight over election misinformation. This confluence of new tech and big elections is also happening while the social media industry is going through major changes, including shifts in moderation approaches, legal battles, cuts to trust and safety teams, and platform shake-ups. This is all poised to make the future of the fight against misinformation murky, to say the least. It's a topic my colleagues and I take very seriously and have covered extensively in the past. And recently in MIT Technology Review, former Google boss Eric Schmidt penned an op-ed that lays out what he calls "a paradigm shift for social media platforms": The role of Facebook and others has conditioned our understanding of social media as centralized, global "public town squares" with a never-ending stream of content and frictionless feedback.

Another former Google chief has issued an apocalyptic warning about artificial intelligence - saying it could'endanger' humans in five years. Billionaire Eric Schmidt, who served as Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011, said there were not enough safeguards placed on A.I and it was only a matter of time before humans lost control of the technology. He alluded to the dropping of nuclear weapons in Japan as a warning that without regulations in place, there may not be enough time to clean up the mess in the aftermath of potentially devastating societal impacts. Speaking at a health summit Tuesday, Schmidt said: 'After Nagasaki and Hiroshima, it took 18 years to get to a treaty over test bans and things like that. We don't have that kind of time today.'

Usual weather prediction systems have the capacity to generate around 50 predictions for the week ahead. FourCastNet can instead predict thousands of possibilities, accurately capturing the risk of rare but deadly disasters and thereby giving vulnerable populations valuable time to prepare and evacuate. The hoped-for revolution in climate modeling is just the beginning. With the advent of AI, science is about to become much more exciting--and in some ways unrecognizable. The reverberations of this shift will be felt far outside the lab; they will affect us all.

Fox News correspondent Matt Finn has the latest on the impact of AI technology that some say could outpace humans on'Special Report.' Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the tech industry will face a "reckoning" over artificial intelligence, comparing the potential dangers of the technology to the risks associated with social media when the platforms were first rolled out years ago. "What happened with social media is we, including myself, just offered social media because we had a simple model of how humans would use social media. But, instead, look at how social media was used to interfere in elections, to cause harm. People have died over social media," Schmidt told ABC News on Sunday.

By Latha Srinivasan: There are many lessons to be learnt from the ideology of our Sanskrit epics, say scholars. The contribution of the Bhagavad Gita to management principles is well-documented today. Now, there is a train of thought that believes the Mahabharata can teach us how to manage machine autonomy and Artificial Intelligence (AI). While experts believe that AI will improve human effectiveness, capacities, and open a world of vast opportunities, it also presents us with unprecedented threats. So how does the Mahabharata help us in this context?

A startup called Istari, backed by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and chair of Alphabet, reckons some of that work can be done more effectively in the metaverse. Ishtari uses machine learning to virtually assemble and test war machines from computer models of individual components, such as the chassis and engines, that are usually marooned on separate digital drawing boards. It may sound dull, but Schmidt says it can bring a dose of tech industry innovation to US military engineering. "The Istari team is bringing internet-type usability to models and simulations," he says. "This unlocks the possibility of software-like agility for future physical systems--it is very exciting."

Eric Schmidt has prodded the Pentagon for years to hurry along its software-buying process. Today the AI tech investor and former Google CEO is more determined than ever to urge government decision-makers to pick up the pace, but not just when it comes to buying more software for the Defense Department. Schmidt wants the government to implement his sweeping blueprint to fight what he considers an existential threat to democracy posed by China's AI plans, an effort that could also bolster his own commercial AI interests. He says the U.S.'s national security and economic leadership are dependent upon spending billions to procure smarter software, bolster AI research, and build the country's computer science talent pool. And he says he knows better than the Pentagon itself how to remove the bureaucratic blockades preventing more agile use of AI by the government. But at the same time, Schmidt's venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors has invested in companies that have received multimillion-dollar contracts from federal agencies. Some of those investments and contracts -- reported here for the first time -- were granted between 2016 and 2021 while Schmidt chaired two influential government initiatives, the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

Ethics and Eric Schmidt are rare bedfellows. The former Google/Alphabet CEO/Chairman exudes a sense of predatory self-interest, always making the point that what he wants aligns with what is supposedly good for the United States. He has splashed money on numerous projects, including such artificial intelligence outfits as Rebellion Defense, all the time maintaining uncomfortably close ties to the government advisory circuit. For years, he has been hectoring the Department of Defense to uncritically embrace AI, in other words, machine-learning technology. "You absolutely suck at machine learning," Schmidt boldly told General Raymond Thomas in July 2016, head of US Special Operations Command.