Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America

Summary

At the All-In Summit, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt discusses the US-China AI race, arguing China is skipping the AGI race to apply AI to consumer apps and robotics while winning the open-weights ecosystem with models like DeepSeek R1. He explains why he took over Relativity Space, how drone warfare in Ukraine is rewriting military doctrine, and why he still calls the AI revolution underhyped while pushing back on three-year superintelligence timelines. He also covers remote work, demographics and American exceptionalism, and praises Gemini's leaderboard leadership and DeepMind's scientific-discovery work.

• Schmidt opposes remote work for young employees and cites China's 996 work culture as the competition.
• China is not chasing AGI (chip limits, shallow capital markets) but applies AI to consumer apps and robotics and leads on open-weight models.
• DeepSeek R1's low-precision reinforcement-learning training is called a major achievement that disrupted Meta's open-source plans.
• Schmidt took over Relativity Space as a low-Earth-orbit launch competitor with a full order book.
• Drone warfare makes tanks and fixed infrastructure obsolete; the next phases are counter-drone detection and RL battle planning.
• Savant-level superintelligence may arrive in six to seven years, but AGI requires self-set objectives and shows no evidence yet.
• Declining fertility (China about 1.0, Korea 0.78) shrinks customer bases; Schmidt favors immigration as a partial fix.
• Gemini releases top the leaderboards and DeepMind's scientific-discovery work is described as a path to AGI.