Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Stanford Talk Gets Awkwardly Live-Streamed: Here’s the Juicy Takeaways
So, Eric Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO for a solid decade, recently spoke at a Stanford University conference. The guy was really letting loose, sharing all sorts of insider thoughts. At one point, he got super serious and told the students that the meeting was confidential, urging them not to spill the beans.
But here’s the kicker: the organizers then told him the whole thing was being live-streamed. And yeah, his face froze. Stanford later took the video down from YouTube, but the internet never forgets—people had already archived it. Check out a full transcript backup on Github by searching "Stanford_ECON295⧸CS323_I_2024_I_The_Age_of_AI,_Eric_Schmidt.txt"
Here’s the TL;DR of what he said:
• Google’s losing in AI because it cares too much about work-life balance. Schmidt’s basically saying, “If your team’s only showing up one day a week, how are you gonna beat OpenAI or Anthropic?”
• He’s got a lot of respect for Elon Musk and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) because they push their employees hard. According to Schmidt, you need to keep the pressure on to win. TSMC even makes physics PhDs work on factory floors in their first year. Can you imagine American PhDs doing that?
• Schmidt admits he’s made some bad calls, like dismissing NVIDIA’s CUDA. Now, CUDA is basically NVIDIA’s secret weapon, with all the big AI models running on it, and no other chips can compete.
• He was shocked when Microsoft teamed up with OpenAI, thinking they were too small to matter. But turns out, he was wrong. He also threw some shade at Apple, calling their approach to AI too laid-back.
• Schmidt threw in a cheeky comment about TikTok, saying if you’re starting a business, go ahead and “steal” whatever you can, like music. If you make it big, you can afford the best lawyers to cover your tracks.
• OpenAI’s Stargate might cost way more than expected—think $300 billion, not $100 billion. Schmidt suggested the U.S. either get cozy with Canada for their hydropower and cheap labor or buddy up with Arab nations for funding.
• Europe? Schmidt thinks it’s a lost cause for tech innovation, with Brussels killing opportunities left and right. He sees a bit of hope in France but not much elsewhere. He’s also convinced the U.S. has lost China and that India’s now the most important ally.
• As for open-source in AI? Schmidt’s not so optimistic. He says it’s too expensive for open-source to handle, and even a French company he’s invested in, Mistral, is moving towards closed-source.
• AI, according to Schmidt, will make the rich richer and the poor poorer. It’s a game for strong countries, and those without the resources might be left behind.
• Don’t expect AI chips to bring back manufacturing jobs. Factories are mostly automated now, and people are too slow and dirty to compete. Apple moving its MacBook production to Texas isn’t about cheap labor—it’s about not needing much labor at all.
• Finally, Schmidt compared AI to the early days of electricity. It’s got huge potential, but it’s gonna take a while—and some serious organizational innovation—before we see the real benefits. Right now, we’re all just picking the low-hanging fruit.
fortune.com
