• Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said AI could shape a child’s identity and culture.
• Schmidt said a child’s best friend could be “not human” in the future.
• Schmidt said global tech leaders should establish AI safety standards.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says AI will change how children learn and could shape their culture and worldview.

Schmidt spoke at Princeton University — his alma mater — this week to promote his forthcoming book, “Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit.” Schmidt co-authored the book with Craig Mundie, former Microsoft CTO and OpenAI advisor, and the late American diplomat Henry Kissinger.

Schmidt said during the talk that he thinks most people aren’t ready for the technological advancements AI could bring.

“I can assure you that the humans in the rest of the world, all the normal people — because you all are not normal, sorry to say, you’re special in some way — the normal people are not ready,” Schmidt told the Princeton crowd. “Their governments are not ready. The government processes are not ready. The doctrines are not ready. They’re not ready for the arrival of this.”

Schmidt has advised the US government and military on technology for years. In 2016, he chaired the Defense Innovation Board, which advises the Defense Department, and chaired the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in 2018.

More recently, he founded White Stork, a startup that builds AI attack drones. At Stanford University in April, Schmidt said the Ukraine War had turned him into an arms dealer.

His vision — and concern — for AI, however, extends beyond the battlefield. He said, for example, that a child’s best friend could be “not human” in the future, which could present problems.

“What are the rules?” he asked. “Is it OK that … it’s the equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg as just the surrogate parent who gets to decide what your kid learns and doesn’t learn.”

Schmidt said that’s why the world should design safety requirements for AI.

“Playing with the way people think is really powerful,” he said. “If you think about state-sponsored misinformation, that’s trivial compared to having your best friend be state-sponsored, and they sort of have daily interaction and shape someone’s identity, their cultural values.”

He added: “In the case where AI is built by one country, hopefully the US, what happens to all the other cultures? Do we just roll through them?”

He said humanity’s transition to AI will be rocky and that much remains to be seen about how humans will integrate with the technology. One audience member asked if most people will use a personal AI for “videos that make them laugh” or for “information that’s only going to confirm their biases.”

“One of the things that’s worth saying is that none of us thought, when we invented social media, that we would become a threat to democracy,” he responded. “That wasn’t on the list of attributes. And these are the unintended effects of technologies that touch humans.”