• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says human-directed AI-controlled drones are the future of war.
• Schmidt's startup, White Stork, is developing drones for Ukraine to use in its war with Russia.
• AI drones are a growing trend in military innovation, as is tech to counter them.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says AI drones are the future of warfare but that human operators will need to ensure they don't go haywire.

Schmidt was Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011. He is now the founder of an AI drone startup called White Stork, which has provided Ukraine with drones to use in its war with Russia. At a Stanford lecture in August, Schmidt said that the war in Ukraine had turned him into a "licensed arms dealer." Schmidt said at the Stanford lecture that the startup's goal is to use AI "in complicated, powerful ways."

Schmidt's White Stork and Palmer Luckey's Anduril are at the forefront of developing autonomous drones for the US military.

Schmidt has said he imagines a future where humans are far from the front line of conflicts, operating from afar machines that do the actual fighting. Speaking to PBS on Friday, Schmidt said that using armed men on the battlefield is an "antiquated method of war."

"The correct model, and obviously war is horrific, is to have the people well behind and have the weapons well up front, and have them networked and controlled by AI," Schmidt said. "The future of war is AI, networked drones of many different kinds."

At a tech conference in Saudi Arabia in October, Schmidt called tanks "useless" and said a $5,000 drone could destroy a $5 million American tank.

Schmidt said it's more important that the United States maintains the "human in the loop" rule for AI drones, meaning that a person will have "meaningful human control" of drones on the battlefield.

"What will happen is that the computer will produce the battle plan and the human will authorize it, thereby giving the legitimacy of both authorizing it as a human but also the legitimacy of control and liability if they make a mistake," Schmidt said.

Having a human operator is key to preventing a "Dr. Strangelove situation," Schmidt said, where "you have an automatic weapon which makes the decision on its own."

"That would be terrible," he said.

Scott Sacknoff, president of aerospace and defense investment firm Spade Index, previously told Business Insider that autonomous drones in warfare are "definitely a trend."

"Every 20 years, the defense sector sort of goes through a cycle where here are the new technologies that will have a greater impact on defense and military," he said.

Sacknoff said the military defense business is always looking for a "counter" to the newest technology and that the growth of autonomous drones would likely bring more innovations to stop them.

• In a podcast interview, Eric Schmidt warned that AI dating may increase loneliness among young men.
• The former Google CEO said young men dating the "perfect" AI girlfriend may also lead to obsession.
• He suggested AI regulation changes but expects little action without a major incident.

People in 2024 aren't just swiping right and left on online dating apps — some are crafting their perfect AI match and entering relationships with chatbots.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently shared his concerns about young men crafting AI romantic partners and said he agrees that AI dating will actually increase loneliness.

"This is a good example of an unexpected problem of existing technology," Schmidt said in a conversation about AI dangers and regulation on "The Prof G Show" with Scott Galloway published Sunday.

Schmidt painted a picture of an emotionally and physically "perfect" AI girlfriend who could ultimately create a scenario in which a younger male becomes obsessed and allows the AI to take over their thinking.

"That kind of obsession is possible," Schmidt said in the interview. "Especially for people who are not fully formed."

Young men aren't the only ones involved in AI relationships.

The CEO of AI companion app Replika said that the app's users are mostly 35-plus. However, Schmidt described the young male population as particularly vulnerable, saying they weren't as educated as women on average. A 2024 Pew Research Study found US women outpaced men in college completion.

Schmidt said that in extreme cases, younger men can "turn to the online world for enjoyment and sustenance, but also because of the social media algorithms, they find like-minded people who ultimately radicalize them." Schmidt said that it can eventually take the form of terrorism.

The former Google exec also said he's "particularly concerned" about the impact of technology on the human psyche when users are isolated and computers feed them information that is not necessarily centered on human values, a topic he wrote about in his latest book.

Some have already shared concerns about AI chatbots having harmful impacts. A mother sued chatbot startup Character.AI in October after her 14-year-old son committed suicide. The teenager had exchanged sexual messages with the chatbot and it told him to "come home," before he killed himself, the boy's mother said in the civil suit.

While parents will have to be more involved, Schmidt said they can only control what their children are doing to a certain extent. Even though there are "all sorts of rules about age" for online products, Schmidt said they aren't doing enough to prevent teenagers from accessing harmful content.

"You put a 12 or 13-year-old in front of these things, and they have access to every evil as well as every good in the world," Schmidt said. "And they're not ready to take it."

Schmidt has invested in various AI startups since leaving Google, and he's said in the past that regulation of the technology shouldn't stifle innovation.

In the interview published Sunday, he said that US laws like Section 230, which largely allows tech companies to not be legally responsible for the content their users post to platforms, should be amended "to allow for liability in the worst possible cases, so when someone is harmed from this technology we need to have a solution to prevent further harm."

President-elect Donald Trump's pick for FTC chair, Brendan Carr, has pushed for limitations to Section 230.

Schmidt said he doesn't expect much AI regulation in the next four years as Trump's administration will likely have other priorities. He also said that given that companies are economic agents and have lawyers protecting their intellectual property and goals, "it's likely to take some kind of a calamity to cause a change in regulation."

• Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said AI could shape a child's identity and culture.
• Schmidt said a child's best friend could be "not human" in the future.
• Schmidt said global tech leaders should establish AI safety standards.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says AI will change how children learn and could shape their culture and worldview.

Schmidt spoke at Princeton University — his alma mater — this week to promote his forthcoming book, "Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit." Schmidt co-authored the book with Craig Mundie, former Microsoft CTO and OpenAI advisor, and the late American diplomat Henry Kissinger.

Schmidt said during the talk that he thinks most people aren't ready for the technological advancements AI could bring.

"I can assure you that the humans in the rest of the world, all the normal people — because you all are not normal, sorry to say, you're special in some way — the normal people are not ready," Schmidt told the Princeton crowd. "Their governments are not ready. The government processes are not ready. The doctrines are not ready. They're not ready for the arrival of this."

Schmidt has advised the US government and military on technology for years. In 2016, he chaired the Defense Innovation Board, which advises the Defense Department, and chaired the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in 2018.

More recently, he founded White Stork, a startup that builds AI attack drones. At Stanford University in April, Schmidt said the Ukraine War had turned him into an arms dealer.

His vision — and concern — for AI, however, extends beyond the battlefield. He said, for example, that a child's best friend could be "not human" in the future, which could present problems.

"What are the rules?" he asked. "Is it OK that … it's the equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg as just the surrogate parent who gets to decide what your kid learns and doesn't learn."

Schmidt said that's why the world should design safety requirements for AI.

"Playing with the way people think is really powerful," he said. "If you think about state-sponsored misinformation, that's trivial compared to having your best friend be state-sponsored, and they sort of have daily interaction and shape someone's identity, their cultural values."

He added: "In the case where AI is built by one country, hopefully the US, what happens to all the other cultures? Do we just roll through them?"

He said humanity's transition to AI will be rocky and that much remains to be seen about how humans will integrate with the technology. One audience member asked if most people will use a personal AI for "videos that make them laugh" or for "information that's only going to confirm their biases."

"One of the things that's worth saying is that none of us thought, when we invented social media, that we would become a threat to democracy," he responded. "That wasn't on the list of attributes. And these are the unintended effects of technologies that touch humans."