Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie: How AI will change the world

The two technologists worked with statesman Henry Kissinger on his final book prior to his death last year

Key Takeaways

• Henry Kissinger believed AI would be as transformative as the printing press.

• Kissinger also expressed concern about the speed at which AI was evolving.

• Tech execs Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie weighed in on the future of AI regulation at a recent Hopkins Bloomberg Center event.

In the final years of his life, elder statesman Henry Kissinger became fascinated with artificial intelligence. Kissinger, who held a variety of foreign service and international security roles in Republican administrations, partnered with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie, a former Microsoft executive, to write a book about the AI age.

After Kissinger died in November 2023, Schmidt and Mundie completed the book, titled Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit. They spoke about their book at a recent Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center event hosted by the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Here are three takeaways from their conversation:  

1. The AI Era could be comparable to the enlightenment

Before his death, Kissinger compared AI technology to the printing press, which “caused the complete transformation of European society and governance … of the nation state as we know it,” Mundie said.

The statesman, Mundie added, was concerned with the speed of the AI revolution.

“The transformation from the printing press to the new order at that time took 300 years, and it was still disruptive,” Mundie said.

2. Schmidt: Governments are still more powerful than tech companies

The U.K.’s science and technology secretary Peter Kyle recently argued governments should approach giant tech companies as though they are nation states.

While acknowledging the influence companies such as Microsoft and his former employer Google have, Schmidt argued governments are far more powerful than tech giants, pointing to their weapons caches and ability to arrest.

“There’s a point when AI power meets hard power, and at least for a while, hard power has some control over it,” he said.

3. Regulation will depend on how rapidly AI grows

Schmidt argued governments’ ability to regulate AI will come down to how many big companies arise.

“If there are three countries and seven companies doing this, they will be regulated,” Schmidt said. “If there are a million points of innovation, it will be extremely difficult.”

Text originally published here.