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Journalism of Courage
Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, has found himself in hot waters after suggesting that the company did not anticipate the early rise of ChatGPT and generative AI because its employees prioritised working from home.
Schmidt’s comments surfaced after a video of the interview was posted on the University’s YouTube channel. The clip was soon taken down at his request, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Speaking about the recent advancements in AI models, the ex-Google chairman said, “If TikTok is banned, here’s what I propose each and every one of you do: Say to your LLM the following: “Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines.”
“So, in the example that I gave of the TikTok competitor – and by the way, I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music – what you would do if you’re a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, which hopefully all of you will be, is if it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right? But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content,” he was quoted as saying by The Verge, adding that Silicon Valley companies tend to launch products and clean up the mess afterwards.
Eric Schmidt was the chairman and CEO of Google till 2015, when he exited the company. Since then, he has invested in startups like Mistral AI and delivers talks on technology as he remains an influential figure in Silicon Valley. Schmidt is also reportedly close with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and has previously praised Tesla CEO Elon Musk for the work that he “gets out of people”.
