Rise of AI will create more jobs than it destroys, says former Google chief Eric Schmidt

Predictions of a billion roles disappearing 'almost certainly false', businessman tells The National at Saudi Arabia’s FII

Former Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt has predicted that the rise of artificial intelligence will be a net creator of jobs, contradicting the conventional wisdom that it will lead to higher unemployment.

Speaking to The National at Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative, Mr Schmidt said predictions that a billion jobs will be lost in the next decade because of the technology were “almost certainly false”.

“AI increases capacity, if you will. So why would you implement an AI system if you’re running a business? You would do it to make more money,” he said.

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“More money creates more wealth in the system, at least in economies with progressive taxation. That money gets recycled into the entire system. So there’s no question there’s job losses, but for every job loss, there’s probably more than one job created. There’ll be more jobs created than jobs lost.”

During an On The Record with Hadley Gamble interview, Mr Schmidt also discussed US President Donald Trump’s attitude to the emerging technology.

“What I like about what the President did is he said, ‘We, America, are going to win in AI, and this is what it's going to take’,” Mr Schmidt said. “He’s taken a position of American dominance, and frankly, Europeans do not have the capital markets and the chips and so forth to do this, it's going to have to come from America.”

US ahead in AI race

He added that he was encouraged by Mr Trump’s stance and that he believed the US was winning the AI race – for now.

“At the moment, the United States, without question, [is winning],” he said. “The US has a deep financial market that allows you to raise literally a trillion dollars on a thesis, and an idea, which is incredible. You have this massive build-out going on, and you have a real potential of solving hard problems.”

Asked about how quickly China would catch up, he said it was not as close as he had previously thought.

“They have lots of energy, but they don't have the depth of the capital markets. And they don't have the chips,” he said. “They haven't figured out a way to make all that money the way the US does, and the chips, they haven't been able to make the chips that the United States and others will give them. That keeps them behind by a good chunk.”

But unlike the West, Mr Schmidt said, where AI innovation is the focus, China is looking to use the technology to make businesses more efficient.

“I think it’s fair to say that the two groups are following different strategies,” he said. “China is … focusing on exploiting AI in every aspect of its business much better than the United States. I think the US will win on the intelligence race, but China is likely to win on the deployment race, and that's a problem for America.”

Another issue for the US is immigration, he said.

“More than half of the companies founded in Silicon Valley are founded by immigrants,” he said. "[Google co-founder] Sergey Brin is an immigrant from Russia. Can you imagine if his father had not been allowed into the country? Thank God he was allowed.”

Asked if this was an issue that Mr Trump was getting wrong, Mr Schmidt said: “The policy has been an error for decades.

“I disagree with the current anti-immigration focus [of the Trump administration]. Our industry as a whole has for decades said one of the great gifts of America is its ability to attract worldwide talent.

“We should get them into our PhD programmes, get them maths and physics degrees, and give them green cards and keep them in the United States. It is insane to take a physicist who is Chinese, train them in America, send them back to China, and have them create a quantum company to compete with us, which is what's happening.”