🧐 Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses Eric Schmidt's insights on the rapid advancements in AI and its potential impact on the world. It highlights Schmidt's changing perspectives on the AI landscape, the convergence of large context windows, agent-based systems, and text-to-action capabilities, and the staggering scale of investment required to drive these developments.

🙋 Q&A

[01] Schmidt's Changing Perspectives on AI

1. What was Schmidt's perspective on the gap between frontier AI models and the rest, and how did it change over time?

• Six months ago, Schmidt was convinced that the gap was getting smaller, so he invested heavily in smaller AI companies.
• Now, he is not so sure about this perspective and has revised his outlook on the AI landscape.

2. What factors contributed to Schmidt's change in perspective?

• Schmidt, as an insider and well-informed individual in the AI field, is putting his money behind many AI companies and understands the scale and neural networks.
• Despite his deep understanding, his perspective on the AI landscape changed significantly within just six months, highlighting the high degree of uncertainty in the field.

[02] Convergence of AI Capabilities

1. What are the key AI capabilities that Schmidt expects to have a significant impact on the world?

• Large context windows (working memory of large language models)
• Agent-based systems that can autonomously execute multi-step tasks and adapt to environmental feedback
• Text-to-action capabilities that can translate natural language into specific, working programs

2. How does Schmidt envision these capabilities converging to create disruptive changes?

• The combination of these capabilities will have an impact on the world at a scale that is not yet fully understood, but it is expected to be much bigger than the impact of social media.
• These forces will converge, leading to rapid and turbulent changes in the next two years, according to Schmidt.

[03] Implications for Entrepreneurs

1. What example does Schmidt provide to illustrate the potential for entrepreneurs to leverage AI?

• Schmidt suggests that an entrepreneur could instruct an LLM to "Make me a copy of TikTok. Steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines."

2. How does the current state of LLMs support this type of rapid product iteration?

• LLMs can already analyze and deconstruct complex content, such as academic papers or books, in real-time.
• Upcoming LLMs with larger contexts, internet connectivity, and the ability to write code will be even more capable of rapidly iterating through new digital and physical products, as Schmidt suggests.

[04] Challenges of Scale and Investment

1. What scale of investment does Schmidt suggest is required to drive these AI advancements?

• Schmidt notes that leading companies are discussing needs of "$10 billion, 20 billion, 50 billion, 100 billion," and that OpenAI's Sam Altman believes it might take "about $300 billion, maybe more."

2. How does the scale of investment translate to broader challenges?

• The enormous energy requirements for these investments could reshape geopolitical alliances, as Schmidt states, "We as a country do not have enough power to do this."

[05] Significance of Schmidt's Insights

1. Why are Schmidt's insights in this intimate Stanford class setting particularly valuable?

• In this small, intimate setting, Schmidt is likely operating with fewer filters and providing his genuine thoughts on the future of AI, rather than a more guarded public stance.

2. How should readers interpret the significance of Schmidt's insights for their own expectations and plans?

• The rapid changes and transformative potential of AI that Schmidt describes should already be "baked into" readers' expectations and plans for the future, rather than being viewed as a distant or uncertain possibility.