Former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Says Terminator-Style AI Death Scenarios ‘One to Two Decades Away’

Former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt claimed Terminator-style A.I. “death scenarios” are “one to two decades away,” during the Munich Security Conference last month.

“Everyone immediately then wants to talk about all the movie-inspired death scenarios, and I can confidently predict to you that they are one to two decades away,” declared Eric Schmidt during the conference. “So let’s worry about them, but let’s worry about them in a while.”

Despite this, Schmidt also claimed fear of artificial intelligence taking over was the result of “watching too many movies,” and added, “Let me be clear: Humans will remain in charge of A.I. for the rest of time.”

“The other point that I want to remind everyone, these technologies have serious errors in them, and they should not be used with life-critical decisions. So I would not want to be in an airplane where the computer was making all the general intelligence decisions about flying it,” Schmidt proclaimed. “The technology is just not reliable enough ― there too many errors in its use. It is advisory, it makes you smarter and so forth, but I wouldn’t put it in charge of command and control.”

Last month, Schmidt, who stepped down as executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet in December, claimed it is “very important” that Western countries fund A.I. research before China and Russia take the lead.

“I’m very concerned about this. I think that both the Russian and the Chinese leaders have recognized the value of this, not just for their commercial aspirations, but also their military aspirations,” he expressed. “It is very, very important that the incredible engines that exist in Europe, and Britain, wherever, United States etc, get more funding for basic research, ethics and so forth.”

In 2016, during the United States presidential elections, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange warned the public that Schmidt, and Google, were “directly engaged” with the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.