(Bloomberg) -- Eric Schmidt, Google's former chief executive officer and currently a top technical adviser to the Pentagon, argued on Monday that U.S. restrictions on hiring from China and sharing technology with the country are counterproductive.
“I think the China problem is solvable with the following insight: we need access to their top scientists,” Schmidt said at an event on artificial intelligence and ethics at Stanford University.
Schmidt didn't directly mention U.S. policies. But his comments came as the Trump administration weighs placing export bans on more critical technology fields, including AI systems and quantum computing, which would make it more difficult for American firms to hire experts from China.
The White House has also accused Alphabet Inc.'s Google of sharing technology with companies and the government in China. Schmidt subtly pushed back on this in his comments on U.S.-China relations. “We also benefit from common frameworks, Tensorflow is one of them,” he said. Tensorflow is Google's open-source, free software library for creating AI tools like image-recognition. The company has promoted it aggressively in China.
“It's being used pretty much by everybody now,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt left his role as chairman of Alphabet at the end of 2017 but remains a technical adviser and the third-largest shareholder. He also chairs advisory boards on AI for Congress and the Defense Department. Pentagon officials frequently cite China's advances in AI as a national security concern.
Monday, Schmidt spent much of his time lauding the benefits of AI. He did, however, offer one criticism of the technology. “In China, the surveillance technology, as a technical matter is well done, has had a terrible impact,” he said.
“I think it's important that we establish right here, right now that the liberal values of Stanford University, Western values, are the ones that should win.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Bergen in San Francisco at mbergen10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net
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