Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt previously retracted harsh words about Google’s remote work policy has influenced the company’s innovation in artificial intelligence.

In an email to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday Schmidt retracted the comments He made the remark during a talk at Stanford University in July. He attributed the company’s poor AI performance to remote work.

“I let slip something about Google and their working hours,” said Schmidt. “I regret my mistake.”

The original comments, first reported The surveys, published by Fortune, were asked in response to the question of why startups like OpenAI are leading the way in AI innovation. “Google has decided that work-life balance, going home early and working from home are more important than winning,” Schmidt said.

“And the reason startups work is because people work like crazy,” he added.

Google stricter remote working policies introduced Last year, on-site employees were required to document their attendance to ensure they adhered to the three-day-a-week office rule, and managers also take their absences into account in performance reviews.

The Alphabet Workers Union, the union representing employees of Google’s parent company Alphabet, blown up Schmidt’s first comments in a post on X-Wednesday.

“Flexible work arrangements do not slow down our work,” the union said. “Understaffing, changing priorities, constant layoffs, stagnant wages and a lack of management commitment to projects – these are factors that slow down Google employees every day.”

Schmidt, who was CEO of Google for ten years and a member of Alphabet’s board of directors in 2019, is not the first manager to rail against remote work. Top executives in companies from Morgan Stanley And Goldman Sachs To DellAmazon (AMZN), X and even more have made tough decisions – sometimes even threatening – Attitudes towards teleworking.

However, the evidence on the impact of remote work on productivity is mixed: some studies have found that Working from home increases productivity (as much as 24%), while others say the opposite.

—Laura Bratton contributed to this article.