Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the world is three to five years away from “artificial general intelligence” that will be equal to, if not better, than any human thinkers or creators today.
It’s a prediction that, if true, could have tremendous consequences for music and other creative industries.
“Within three to five years we’ll have what is called [artificial] general intelligence, AGI, which can be defined as a system that is as smart as the smartest mathematician, physicist, artist, writer, thinker, politician… you get the idea,” Schmidt said during a panel discussion with Jeanne Meserve, host of the NatSec Tech podcast for the Special Competitive Studies Project.
Schmidt said this will be possible because of a process called “recursive self-improvement,” in which AI algorithms are able to learn on their own and increase their capabilities – and he says this is already happening.
According to Schmidt, research teams at OpenAI and Anthropic (two leading AI companies that have been sued for allegedly violating the copyrights of authors and composers to create their AI models) and at other AI companies say that 10% to 20% of their research programs’ code is being written by AI today, and this process will lead to artificial general intelligence perhaps sooner than people realize.
“What happens when every single one of us has the equivalent of the smartest human [working] on every problem in our pocket?” he asked.
Schmidt asserted that despite all the talk about AI over the past few years, the technology isn’t “overhyped” but rather “underhyped,” because people largely don’t understand the scale of change and the speed of change it will bring.
“This is happening faster than… our society, our democracy, our laws will address, and there’s lots of implications. That’s why it’s underhyped – people do not understand what happens when you have intelligence at this level which is largely free.”
Schmidt described his view on the issue as “the San Francisco consensus” because “everyone who believes this is in San Francisco.”
This “San Francisco consensus” also predicts that we are around six years away from the next step beyond artificial general intelligence: Artificial super intelligence (ASI), which is “the theory that there will be computers that are smarter than the sum of humans.”
“This is happening faster than… our society, our democracy, our laws will address, and there’s lots of implications… People do not understand what happens when you have intelligence at this level which is largely free.”
Eric Schmidt
Predictions like that are likely not what artists, record companies and music rights holders want to hear.
As AI technology has exploded across the world, groups like the Human Artistry Campaign have advocated for policies that prioritize human creativity, while record companies, music publishers and other rights holders have sought to hold AI developers accountable for their unauthorized use of copyrighted materials to create AI models that can generate content that competes with human-made art. Many music industry executives have stressed they want to adopt AI as a tool that improves human music-making, and not as a tool that replaces it.
Schmidt’s assertion, if true, indicates that the road ahead for human artistry may be more difficult than previously thought. While the controversy over copyright and AI didn’t come up in the panel discussion, Schmidt’s description of the situation suggests that policymakers are focused on a different aspect of the problem – the geopolitical race between the US and China over dominance of AI.
Because tech companies are “network effect businesses,” the leader in the industry tends to get a huge chunk of the market – think Google’s search engine, Netflix, or Spotify. For this reason, the stakes in the race between the US and China are very high. Schmidt even suggested that, when artificial super intelligence is on the brink of becoming reality, the country that’s behind in the race could choose to start a war rather than risk being left behind.
It may well be the concern over losing this geopolitical-technological race that prompted Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk to call for the elimination of all intellectual property laws – despite the obvious damage that such a move would do to the entire economy.
Notably, Schmidt isn’t particularly concerned about the potential of these powerful new AI tools to sideline human creators and eliminate jobs. In his view, automation of vast tracts of the economy could address the problem of declining birth rates, which is now a worldwide phenomenon.
“Everyone assumes that automation will replace, will eliminate jobs. If you look at the history of automation ever since [power looms replaced handmade weaving] 300 years ago, the jobs are changed but more jobs are created than destroyed… You’d have to convince me that this time is different,” he said.
Schmidt gave the example of Asia, “where they – for whatever reason – are choosing not to have children,” noting that the birth rate in some countries has fallen below one child per woman.
“They’re rapidly disappearing, so the Asian countries are very, very quickly automating the tools that I’m describing [which] will allow the few humans that will be working… it’ll make their productivity much greater.”
Needless to say, that’s of little comfort to the artists and composers who may soon have to compete with technologies that are smarter than any human alive today.Music Business Worldwide
