Latest news with #EricSchmidt
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's AI Expo serves up visions of war, robotics, and LLMs for throngs of tech execs, defense officials, and fresh recruits
Drones buzz overhead, piercing the human hum in the crowded Walter E. Washington Convention Center. On the ground, tech executives, uniformed Army officers, policy wonks, and politicians compete for attention as swarms of people move throughout the vast space. There are pitches about 'next generation of warfighters,' and panels about winning the 'AI innovation race.' There are job seekers and dignitaries. And at the center of it all, there is Eric Schmidt. The former Google CEO is the cofounder of the non-profit that organizes the confab, known as the AI+ Expo for National Competitiveness. The Washington DC event, now in its second year, is a fascinating, real world manifestation of the Schmidt worldview, which sees artificial intelligence, business, geopolitics, and national defense as interconnected forces reshaping America's global strategy. If it was once the province of futurists and think tank researchers, this worldview is now increasingly the consensus view. From innovations like self-driving robotaxis circulating in multiple U.S. cities to Silicon Valley defense startups snagging large government contracts, evidence of change—and of the stakes involved—are everywhere. The AI+ Expo, hosted by Schmidt's Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), is ground zero for the stakeholders of this new world order: Thousands of Washington insiders, military brass, tech executives, policymakers, students, and curious professionals are drawn together under one stars and stripes-style banner—to ensure America leads the AI age. It's a kind of AI county fair, albeit one where Lockheed Martin stages demos, defense tech companies hand out swag, Condoleezza Rice takes the stage, and protesters outside chant 'No tech for genocide' during Schmidt's keynote. The event is free to attend, and lines to enter stretch around the block. The only thing missing? GPU corn dogs on a stick, perhaps. Soft lobbying is omnipresent at the event. Tesla, for instance, offers self-driving tech demos just as the company prepares to launch its first robotaxi service in Austin and as Elon Musk pushes lawmakers on autonomous vehicle regulations. OpenAI is also working the room, touting its o3 reasoning model, newly deployed on a secure government supercomputer at Los Alamos. 'The transfer of model weights occurred via highly secured and heavily encrypted hard drives that were hand carried by OpenAI personnel to the Lab,' a company spokesperson told Fortune. 'For us, today's milestone, and this partnership more broadly, represents more than a technical achievement. It signals our shared commitment to American scientific leadership.' It's not just about the federal government, either – even state leaders are angling for attention. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, who is publicizing his state's AI data center investments and gave a keynote at the Expo told Fortune, 'The leaders in this space are here, and I want to be talking to the leaders that are going to make decisions about where they're making capital investments in the future.' The Expo is hosted by The Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit Schmidt cofounded in 2021 and for which he remains the major funder and chair. SCSP operates as a subsidiary of The Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, the Schmidt family's private foundation, and is an outgrowth of the now-defunct National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence — the temporary federal advisory body Schmidt also led from 2018 to 2021. The Expo is about building a community that brings private sector, academia and government into one place, said Ylli Bajraktari, president and CEO of SCSP and Schmidt's co-founder, who previously served as chief of staff to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and joined the Department of Defense in 2010. 'Washington is not a tech city, but yet, this is a city where [tech and AI] policies are being developed,' he said. Still, all of this seems really about Schmidt's vision for the future of AI, which he shared in depth in a highly-publicized TED talk last month. In it, he argued that humans should welcome the advancement of AI because our society will not have enough humans to be productive in the future–while delivering a dire warning about how the race for AI dominance could go wrong as the technology becomes a geopolitically destabilizing force. He repeated his hypothetical doomsday scenario in his Expo keynote. Schmidt posits an AI competitor who is advancing quickly, and is only about six months behind the U.S. in developing cutting-edge AI. In other international competitions, this could mean a relatively stable balance of power. But the fear is that once a certain level of AI capability is reached, a steep acceleration curve means the other side will never catch up. According to Schmidt, the other side would have to consider bombing their opponent's data centers to stop them from becoming permanently dominant. It's a scenario – with a proposed doctrine called Mutual AI Malfunction that would slow down each side and control progress – that Schmidt introduced alongside co-authors Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher in their 2021 book The Age of AI and Our Human Future. Schmidt shared a thought exercise about what he would do if he could build the U.S. military completely from scratch – no Pentagon, no bureaucracy, no old, obsolete technology – that would basically resemble a tech company: agile, software-driven, and centered around networked, AI-powered systems. 'I would have two layers of drones,' he said. 'I'd have a set of ISR drones [unmanned aerial vehicles used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions]. Those are ones that are high and they have deep looking cameras, and they watch everything. They're connected by an AI network, which is presumably designed to be un-jammable. And then I would have essentially bomber drones of one kind or another, the ISR drones would observe, and they would immediately dispatch the bomber.' With that kind of a defensive system, he added, 'it would be essentially impossible to invade a country by land,' and said that he wanted US assets to be protected by defensive 'drone swarms,' adding that 'there's an entire set of companies in America that want to build this…many of them are here at our show – I want a small amount of the government's money to go into that industry.' Schmidt's Expo is open to all, and there were those in attendance who would beg to differ with his gung-ho takes on the future of battle. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, showcased a booth with thought-provoking, graffiti-style questions like 'Does AI make wars better or worse?' Even student attendees well-versed in wargaming, like Luke Miller, a rising sophomore studying international relations at the College of William and Mary and a member of a wargames club, said that today's era of AI and national security is 'supposed to be a sobering moment.' For a country like Ukraine to deploy drones to attack Russian air bases — as they did with great effect just days before the conference— 'is something we should definitely be concerned about going forward,' he said. Still, it was Schmidt's vision of the future of warfare and national security that was front and center at an event 'designed to strengthen U.S. and allied competitiveness in critical technologies.' 'Have you all had a chance to go hang out at the drone cage?' he asked the audience, pointing out the young age of many of the competitors. '[They are] beating the much bigger adults,' he said. 'This is the future. They're inventing it with or without us, that's where we should go.' This story was originally featured on
Geek Wire
8 hours ago
- Business
- Geek Wire
Seattle startup backed by former Google CEO lands $16M to automate repetitive tasks on a computer
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Vercept team members, from left: Matt Deitke, co-founder; Kiana Ehsani, CEO; Ross Girshick, co-founder; Cam Sloan, member of technical staff; Kuo-Hao Zeng, founding researcher; Harshitha Rebala, member of technical staff; Eric Kolve, founding engineer; and Luca Weihs, co-founder. Not pictured: Oren Etzioni, co-founder. (Vercept Photo) Vercept revealed this week that it raised a $16 million seed round in January from venture capital firms and prominent tech leaders to build what it describes as the 'computer interface of the future.' The Seattle-based startup, founded last year by a group of former Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) research leaders, has some big name backers including Eric Schmidt, former CEO and chairman at Google; Jeff Dean, chief scientist of Google DeepMind; Kyle Vogt, founder and former CEO of Cruise; Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox; and other longtime tech vets. San Francisco-based Fifty Years led the seed round, which also included Point Nine and Seattle-based AI2 Incubator, the company's first institutional investor. GeekWire first covered Vercept in February when it emerged from stealth mode. Vercept last month revealed Vy, its Mac app that 'sees' and understands computer screens like a human would. It records a user performing tasks across different software or websites — and then autonomously runs the same workflow from a natural language command. The idea is to use AI to automate repetitive tasks, like entering data, producing video content, organizing invoices, and more. Vercept is similar to so-called robotic process automation (RPA) companies such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere, which deploy software robots that mimic human actions. But the startup is 'fundamentally different,' said Vercept CEO and co-founder Kiana Ehsani, who described the product as a 'unified paradigm for interacting with the computer.' 'Unlike traditional RPA solutions, Vy doesn't require hardcoded interactions, pre-built connectors, or APIs to engage with new software,' Ehsani said. 'Whether dealing with legacy applications that lack APIs or modern web platforms, Vy's form of interaction remains consistent, intuitive, and flexible.' OpenAI (Operator), Google (Project Mariner), Amazon (Nova Act), and others recently released tools that automate tasks across browsers and apps, fueled by advances in generative AI. Vercept is building its own model called VyUI, which powers its soon-to-be-released API. 'We envision developers using our API to build a wide range of products and applications, for example: automatic UI test suites, computer and web use agents, RPA solutions, and so on,' the company says on its website. Vercept says VyUI beats competitors on various benchmarks. Ehsani didn't share user growth metrics or revenue data, but said the reception to Vy has exceeded expectations. 'Our user community is wonderfully diverse, from individuals with disabilities integrating their own speech-to-text systems to remotely control their computers, to students leveraging Vy to streamline their homework tasks, to businesses using Vy to automate their workflows,' she told GeekWire. Ehsani previously oversaw the Ai2 robotics and embodied artificial intelligence teams as a senior researcher. Others on the Vercept founding team include: Oren Etzioni, who was the founding CEO of AI2 before stepping down in 2022. Matt Deitke, who led the development of Ai2 research projects including Molmo, ProcTHOR, and Objaverse. Luca Weihs, previously Ai2 research manager and infrastructure team lead, working in areas including AI agents and reinforcement learning. Ross Girshick, a pioneer in the combination of computer vision and deep learning, and a former research scientist at Meta AI and Ai2. Vercept has eight full-time employees. The company was spotlighted in a recent Startup Radar post on GeekWire.
The National
a day ago
- Business
- The National
AI defence expo: Palestine protesters interrupt former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Navy secretary
A prominent AI conference in Washington focusing on US defence technology was interrupted by Palestine protesters for a second day on Tuesday. Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt was speaking before hundreds of people at the AI+ Expo when demonstrators stood up and shouted at the technology tycoon: 'Shame on you! Your AI is being used in genocide!" Mr Schmidt told the moderator, not directly acknowledging the several protesters: 'Let's just wait until the audience can hear us." Mr Schmidt is also the chairman of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), which is the main organiser of the AI+ Expo. SCSP describes itself as an organisation that 'seeks to recapture the competitive mindset and unifying national mission from past eras, and then adapt them to the age of AI and 21st-century strategic rivalry'. Alphabet-owned Google, like several other US-based tech firms, has come under intense criticism for its AI-military defence contracts with Israel. On Monday, protesters interrupted US Navy Secretary John Phelan as he spoke at the conference. 'AI should not be used in genocide,' several people yelled. In both instances, demonstrators tried to unfurl Palestinian flags as people shouted allegations that AI is being used unfairly and disproportionately against Gazans. For Mr Phelan, the protesters also displayed a banner that specifically accused the AI-tech firm Palantir. 'Palantir kills in Gaza,' read the sign, which was ripped away from the protesters. The moderator of the discussion, Mike Gallagher, who is also head of defence at Palantir, decided to address the protests. 'How wonderful to live in a country where people are allowed to speak their minds and ask questions of their governments,' he said. 'Because the adversaries we're up against, whether they're genocidal communists in Beijing or Islamic jihadists in the Middle East, do not.' Demonstrators are increasingly targeting the booming AI sector. Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, Google and Microsoft - which sent representatives to the event - have faced criticism from pro-Gaza protesters. In recent months, Microsoft has had its company events interrupted by demonstrators and former employees who say the company's AI tools are being used by the Israeli military in its assault on Gaza. In responding to the claims, the company recently announced an internal review had found 'no evidence' its products have been used to harm people in Gaza. That review, however, according to demonstrators, left more questions than answers. In May, Palantir's chief executive Alex Karp spent more than 10 minutes sparring with a protester over the company's AI technology being used in the Israel-Gaza war. 'Your AI technology kills Palestinians,' the protester shouted. Mr Karp quickly responded: 'Mostly terrorists, that's true.' The anger related to AI being used in military operations has shown no sign of slowing. Among those speaking at this week's AI conference is Alexandr Wang, chief executive of the increasingly powerful tech firm Scale AI. It too, has come in for criticism for its revenue generated from defence contracts. In a recent interview, Mr Wang defended his company's business model. 'We're at the brink of this incredibly powerful new technology, and the applications for national security are obvious,' Mr Wang said during a discussion at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. 'It's going to be imperative for the US to stay ahead.' Israel's punishing campaign in Gaza – which followed the 2023 attacks by Hamas-led fighters on Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people and the capture of 240 hostages – has killed at least 54,100 people and injured at least 123,208. The war has prompted heightened Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in the US.
TechCrunch
a day ago
- Politics
- TechCrunch
Yoshua Bengio launches LawZero, a nonprofit AI safety lab
In Brief Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio is launching a nonprofit AI safety lab called LawZero to build safer AI systems, he told the Financial Times on Monday. LawZero raised $30 million in philanthropic contributions from Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn, former Google chief Eric Schmidt, Open Philanthropy, and the Future of Life Institute, among others. The name LawZero is a nod to a science fiction concept: the Zeroth Law of Robotics, which places the protection of humanity above all else. Bengio, considered one of the 'godfathers' to the modern AI boom, has become one of the most vocal advocates for the AI safety movement. He publicly supported SB-1047, California's controversial AI safety bill that aimed to prevent AI systems from causing catastrophic scenarios. In an interview with the Financial Times, Bengio said he had little faith in OpenAI and Google to prioritize safety as they race toward more intelligent AI systems.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
When Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt, whose company builds drones for Ukraine, suggested US Army to give away tanks, and ...
On June 1, 2025, Ukraine launched a sweeping drone offensive, codenamed Operation Spiderweb targeting Russian air bases housing nuclear-capable long-range bombers. Over 100 drones struck facilities across Russia, from Murmansk above the Arctic Circle to the Amur region, 8,000 kilometers from Ukraine. The operation, marked by explosions across multiple time zones, underscored the growing role of drones in modern warfare. Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia, in November 2024, Schmidt urged the U.S. to rethink its military priorities, suggesting it replace traditional tank fleets with advanced drones. 'I read somewhere that the U.S. had thousands of tanks stored somewhere. Give them away. Buy a drone instead,' he said, citing Ukraine's success in using affordable drones to counter Russia's numerical and air superiority. Schmidt's advocacy draws from his leadership of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which in 2021 concluded that AI would transform warfare across all domains. Building drones for Ukraine to take on Russia The attack highlights a strategic shift advocated by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt , who has emerged as a key figure in integrating AI-driven technology into military strategy. Schmidt, founder of the military startup White Stork, is developing AI-powered " Kamikaze drones " for Ukraine. These drones, designed to loiter and strike targets autonomously, can operate in GPS-denied environments, making them ideal for Ukraine's battlefield needs. Named after a bird common in Ukraine, White Stork's drones aim to counter Russian forces by destroying high-value targets like tanks, which Schmidt notes can be neutralized by a $5,000 drone despite costing millions. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Thị trường có dấu hiệu suy thoái không? IC Markets Đăng ký Undo In a 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Schmidt called Kamikaze drones—costing as little as $400 and carrying small explosives—'the most important' innovation for defeating Russia and future adversaries. Ukraine's recent operation exemplifies this vision, showcasing how drones can strike deep into enemy territory, reshaping the battlefield. Since leaving Google in 2018, where he served as CEO from 2001 to 2011 and later as executive chairman of Alphabet, Schmidt has bridged Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, championing AI-driven defense solutions. His work with White Stork and his public statements signal a broader push for militaries worldwide to embrace autonomous technology as the future of warfare. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
