Ex-Google CEO’s shock U-turn

Former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, made some controversial comments this week, during an interview (recorded and uploaded to YouTube) at Stanford University, in front of thousands of eager, impressionable students, all keen to progress their careers in AI.

In the interview, he slammed Google’s decision to prioritize employees' “work-life balance, going home early and working from home” claiming it was ‘’blindsided’’ by the rapid rise of ChatGPT, because this was “more important than winning." He went on to say that anyone wishing to start a company in this space should not “let people work from home and only come in one day a week” if they want to “compete against the other start-up's."

He also claimed that it was ok—and normal practice for AI start-up's in Silicon Valley—to steal IP from other companies, and then just hire lawyers to deal with any legal fallout.

He reckons that “If the product is a hit, the entrepreneur only needs to hire a lawyer to solve the legal problems; if the product fails, the theft will be insignificant,” using TikTok as an example, stating that if TikTok was banned, anyone could use AI to build a similar app, steal all its users and content, and put it live, leaving lawyers to pick up the pieces if it took off.

After hitting the headlines over his outlandish thoughts, Schmidt has since retracted his comments on Google’s working practices, saying he “misspoke” and “misrepresented Google’s work schedule,” which he regrets. He also asked for the video of his interview to be taken off YouTube, which it has been.