U.S. Needs Japan, SOKOR To Counter China Tech: Nat'l AI Chair

Eric Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Futures, who has served as CEO for Google, executive chairman, and technical adviser for parent Alphabet, says the US needs to take action to keep its lead over China in artificial intelligence, Akito Tanaka reported for Nikkei Asia.

China's capabilities in artificial intelligence are "much closer than I thought" to catching up to the US, Schmidt told Nikkei Asia, stressing that America will not succeed without a "very strong partnership with our Asian friends." Schmidt urges cooperation in AI, chips, quantum computing, and synthetic biology.

In an online interview, Schmidt, now chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, said China is closing in on the US in certain areas of AI and quantum computing -- faster than his previous estimate of "a couple of years." He added: "That's a really, really big deal."

Schmidt stepped down as executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet in 2018.

He was nominated as the commission chair in 2019 to make AI-related policy recommendations to the president and Congress.

The commission's final report, released in March, warned that "if the United States does not act, it will likely lose its leadership position in AI to China in the next decade and become more vulnerable to a spectrum of AI-enabled threats from a host of state and non-state actors."

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