FILE PHOTO: Eric Schmidt apologized for saying Google was behind in AI because of the company’s remote work policy. | Image credit: Reuters

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt apologized for his comments during a meeting at Stanford. He said Google was behind in AI because of the company’s work-from-home policy. The recording of his lecture, which had been posted on the university’s official YouTube channel, was deleted on August 15 after being viewed over 40,000 times in one day.

“Google has decided that work-life balance, going home early and working from home are more important than winning,” Schmidt said. “I’m sorry to be so direct (…) But the fact is, if you all leave university and start a company, you’re not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups,” he said.

He added that AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic have seen rapid growth because people there are “working like crazy.”

Schmidt later told The Wall Street Journal that he had made a mistake and regretted his statements.

(Subscribe to our tech newsletter, Today’s Cache, to get the day’s top technology news.)

The edge He was also reported to have discussed the copyright issues plaguing the AI ​​business, saying that companies are typically more likely to act illegally and then “clean up the mess.”

Schmidt cited TikTok as an example, saying that if the app were banned, students could simply ask their LLMs to make a copy of the app, steal its users and music, and create and publish a new app in less than a minute.

He added that while he doesn’t advocate theft, business owners could easily hire lawyers later if the app went viral, and if it didn’t, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Schmidt served as chairman and CEO of the technology giant until 2015. He invested in AI startups such as Mistral AI while remaining an influential figure in Silicon Valley.