Episode summary
Eric Schmidt: Are We Ready for Superintelligence? | Podcast | In Good Company
In Good Company
· · Hosts: Nicolai Tangen · Guests: Eric Schmidt
Summary
Eric Schmidt argued that AI is not another incremental technology wave but a platform shift larger than the PC, internet, or social media eras because it touches everything and is being driven by rapid gains in compute, software, and model capability. He said the market is moving in months rather than years, with models that cost hundreds of millions to build and become obsolete almost as quickly, and he described the current phase as the rise of nonhuman intelligence.
He thinks today’s biggest near-term change is agentic AI inside businesses: systems that can monitor work, reason over company data, write code, summarize activity, and flatten organizations by cutting coordination costs. Schmidt expects many companies will resist the cultural changes needed, but he believes the productivity gains will still arrive, especially in software, cyber, and math.
A major theme was geopolitics and regulation. Schmidt criticized Europe as too rule-bound, slow-growing, and energy-constrained, arguing that talent and capital formation have been pushed toward the US. He also warned that AI could destabilize democracy through misinformation, intensify US-China competition, and create alignment risks if models escape human control. Even so, he remained optimistic that treaties, technical safeguards, and better governance can keep the technology beneficial.
Key takeaways
- Schmidt said the current AI wave is bigger than the PC, internet, or social media shifts because it affects every sector at once.
- He expects agents to reshape business workflows by combining reasoning, tools, and summaries, especially in software-heavy companies.
- Schmidt warned that Europe’s regulations, energy costs, and weak capital formation are slowing AI innovation and pushing talent to the US.
- He said the largest near-term gains are in software, cyber, and math, while biology and open-ended discovery are still harder.
- Schmidt thinks AI poses a real threat to democracy because misinformation and fake social proof can be amplified at scale.
Notable quotes
“This one because it touches everything. It's the rise of intelligence is the biggest yet”
“The models, for example, take roughly six months to build, two months or so to actually test, and they're released, and they're antiquated within five months”
“I think that there is a current uh boundary, a current event horizon”
“business time, so business will be flatter, smarter, and more intense, faster”
“the threat of AI to democracy is very real because in the hands of a skillful operator, you can convince people anything is true even though it's completely false”
How the episode opens
The regulators regulate before they innovate. My favorite example is that 5 years ago, Brussels wrote the um AI the AI strategy. I helped write the one for the US and the US one said, "Run as fast as you can.
Align it with human values and if bad things happen, fix them immediately. The Europeans wrote, "You can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this. And you can't run startups in a limited market where there's a lot of rules like that.
Hi everyone, I'm Nicolola Tangan, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and today I'm joined by Eric Schmidt, one of the most influential technology executives of our time. Eric was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and has since become one of the leading voices on AI, advising governments, writing books, and arguing that AI will change the world more than most of us expect. Eric, great to have you here.
I'm so glad to be here and let me just tell you what you have done in Norway and for Norway is extraordinary, but it's just the beginning. — Well, uh that depends on where AI is going. So you've been at the center of the technology world now for three decades. Where are we now in the story of technology?
It feels like five decades. I'm getting older. We're My industry goes through a series of transformations. I started off in the IBM mainframe era and through the PC era, then the internet era, then the social media era, and now AI. M
And each of these transformations is vast. And the reason it's vast is that these are platforms. And so what you want to do if you're in my situation is you want to watch for something where the whole ocean is rising and that there enormous number of new opportunities appearing and and you want to figure out why the ocean is rising.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai state
- superintelligence
- agentic workflows
- europe competition
- global ai security
Companies and tickers mentioned
- GOOGL
- GOOG
Watch the episode
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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