Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called on the US government to fast track development of emerging technology including artificial intelligence (AI) to catch up to China’s lead, reported the South China Morning Post.
The United States is “one or two years ahead of China, not five or 10” and “the Chinese are well ahead in areas like face recognition,” said Schmidt at a Tuesday hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee on emerging technologies and their impact on national security.
“Because of the diffusion of the technology, you have to expect that anything that’s invented in the open source AI world will immediately be adopted by China,” said Schmidt, who is also the chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, established in 2018 through the John S. McCain National Defence Authorisation Act.
“The threat is very, very real.”