Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, called out the tech firm on losing out to start-ups in the AI sector and OpenAI due to its boost for a work-life balance for its employees. The billionaire investor said the company’s support for remote work has resulted in it falling behind in the race for artificial intelligence (AI).
Speaking in an interview at Stanford University, the executive said that the tech giant is lagging in the department of AI development. The former Google official was speaking with Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and the students at the university, reported Moneycontrol.
Notably, Google made a breakthrough AI discovery in 2017, but failed to keep up with development in the sector.
“They’ve kind of lost the initiative to OpenAI, and even the last leaderboard I saw, Anthropic’s Claude was at the top of the list. I asked [Google CEO] Sundar [Pichai] this, he didn’t really give me a very sharp answer. Maybe you have a sharper or a more objective explanation for what’s going on there,” Schmidt said on the discussion of Google’s need to catch up in the AI field.
Explaining why the company failed to beat the start-ups in the sector, the official said that Google gave priority to maintaining a work-life balance for its employees. By allowing its workforce to continue remote work, it didn’t focus on winning in the field, he noted. “And the startups, the reason startups work is the people work like hell,” he added.
“I’m sorry to be so blunt. But the fact of the matter is, if you all leave the university and go found a company, you’re not gonna let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups,” Schmidt said during the interview.
Also Read : New Zealand Sees Historic Surge In Exodus As Economic Woes Deepen