Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He joined Google in 2001 and helped grow the company from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology alongside founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Eric served as Google’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman from 2001-2011, as well as Executive Chairman and Technical Advisor. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.
American businessman and former software engineer Eric Emerson Schmidt led Google as CEO from 2001 to 2011 and as executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. In addition, he was Alphabet Inc.’s executive chairman from 2015 to 2017 and the company’s technical advisor from 2017 to 2020. His net worth was assessed by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to be US$25.1 billion in April 2022. In 1975, while serving as an intern at Bell Laboratories, Schmidt co-authored Lex, a software application designed to provide lexical analyzers for the Unix operating system. He served as Novell’s chief executive officer (CEO) from 1997 until 2001. Schmidt has held positions on several additional boards in both academia and business, such as the Mayo Clinic, Apple, Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the board of trustees for those institutions. In addition, he has a small ownership interest in the National Football League (NFL) Washington Commanders.
As Google’s chairman in 2008, Schmidt ran an Obama campaign and later joined Obama’s President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology alongside Eric Lander. Lander went on to become the science advisor to Joe Biden. Meanwhile, in 2017, Schmidt created the charitable organization Schmidt Futures after leaving Google. Two science-office staff members in the Office of Science and Technology Policy were paid by Schmidt Futures throughout his tenure. Schmidt established the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) in October 2021, and he has been its chairman ever since.
2023
According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities might put mankind in risk in five to ten years, and businesses aren’t doing enough to stop it. Schmidt likened the advancement of AI to the use of nuclear weapons during the Second World War. It took 18 years to achieve a treaty over test restrictions following Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he added, but “we don’t have that kind of time today.” When “the computer can start to make its own decision to do things,” like finding weapons, AI risks arise.
In order to “feed accurate information to policymakers” and ensure that the gravity of the problem is recognized, Schmidt proposed the establishment of an international organization akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The former CEO of Google believes AI may still benefit humans despite his cautions.
Schmidt departed Google in 2011, and the business later developed Bard, an AI tool that competes with OpenAI’s very popular ChatGPT application.
Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you…
Proud to share that former @SchmidtFutures fellow @zweinberg is launching ex/ante (@buildexante) – the first-ever venture fund dedicated to agentic tech: technology that advances individuals’ agency and control—over their privacy, data, assets, and information.
