What is Artificial Super-intelligence? Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns AI will soon outsmart humanity and we are not ready

Economic Times

15 hours ago

Synopsis
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns that Artificial Super-intelligence (ASI) could surpass collective human intelligence within six years. Speaking on the Special Competitive Studies Project podcast, Schmidt said society is vastly unprepared for this shift. He called ASI 'underhyped,' citing how current AI systems already outperform humans in programming and reasoning through recursive self-improvement.
Bloomberg Eric Schmidt predicts AI will soon replace most programmers and surpass human intelligence. On a recent podcast, he described the near-future rise of Artificial Super Intelligence (machines smarter than all of humanity combined) as both imminent and underestimated. In a world consumed by conversations around AI ethics, job losses, and automation, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is raising an alarm—not about what we already know, but about what we don't yet understand. On a recent episode of the Special Competitive Studies Project podcast, Schmidt declared that Artificial Super-intelligence (ASI)—a term that's still absent in most public discourse—is rapidly approaching, and society is dangerously unprepared.Speaking with conviction and urgency, Schmidt laid out a roadmap that reads more like science fiction than emerging reality. Within the next 12 months, he believes, most programming jobs could be replaced by AI. Not only that, AI systems will be able to outpace the brightest graduate-level mathematicians in structured reasoning tasks like advanced math and coding.
At the core of this shift is what he calls recursive self-improvement—AI systems that write their own code using protocols like Lean, making them exponentially more efficient with each iteration. As Schmidt explained: 'Ten to twenty percent of the code in research labs like OpenAI and Anthropic is now being written by AI itself.'
Schmidt anticipates that within three to five years, the tech world will cross the threshold of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—a system that can match human creativity and reasoning across disciplines. But it's what comes next that he finds truly staggering. He refers to ASI, or Artificial Super-intelligence, as a leap beyond individual human intellect—something that could soon exceed the collective intelligence of all humans. 'This occurs within six years, just based on scaling,' he said, citing a growing consensus among Silicon Valley's top thinkers—what he terms the 'San Francisco Consensus.'
Yet, unlike most headlines that exaggerate the risks of AI, Schmidt's stance is paradoxically sobering because it highlights how little attention this seismic shift is receiving. Despite ASI being potentially the most transformative force in human history, Schmidt believes it is severely under-discussed. 'People do not understand what happens when you have intelligence at this level, which is largely free,' he said. The worry, for Schmidt, isn't just about what AI can do—but about how unprepared our legal, ethical, and governance systems are to accommodate it. 'There's no language for what happens with the arrival of this,' Schmidt warned. 'This is happening faster than our society, our democracy, our laws will interact.'
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As AI continues its meteoric rise, the predictions made by Eric Schmidt pose a dual challenge. On one hand, humanity stands on the brink of a new technological renaissance; on the other, we risk spiraling into uncharted waters without a map.
'Super Intelligence isn't a question of if, but when,' Schmidt seems to say—and the fact that we're not talking about it enough may be the biggest threat of all. Whether or not society is ready, Artificial Superintelligence is no longer a distant theory. According to one of tech's most influential figures, it's knocking at our door. And if we don't start preparing, we might not be the ones answering.