Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s $10 million investment in artificial intelligence research aims to tackle safety challenges surrounding the technology.
Eric Schmidt’s $10 Million Bet on A.I. Safety
Investing in the future of A.I. is nothing new for Eric Schmidt, who has spent the past few years backing dozens of startups like ‘Stability AI, Inflection AI, and Mistral AI.’ But through a new $10 million venture aiming to bolster research on safety challenges surrounding the new technology, the former Google CEO is taking a different tack.
Eric Schmidt is a renowned American businessman and engineer who served as the Executive Chairman of Google from 2001 to 2011.
Born on April 27, 1955, in Washington, D.C., Schmidt earned his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and his Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
He co-founded several companies, including Zilog and Novell, before joining Google.
During his tenure at Google, the company expanded exponentially, and Schmidt played a crucial role in shaping its growth.
He stepped down as Executive Chairman in 2011 but remains a prominent figure in the tech industry.
The funds will launch an A.I. safety science program at Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit organization established by Eric Schmidt and his wife ‘Wendy’ last year to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. Instead of simply emphasizing A.I.’s risks, however, the program will prioritize the science underpinning safety research, according to Michael Belinsky, the program’s head.
Addressing Safety Challenges in A.I. Research
The program will offer grants, computational support, and access to frontier A.I. models to researchers working on various aspects of A.I. safety. Initial grantees include renowned researchers like ‘Yoshua Bengio,’ a machine learning expert lauded as one of the ‘Godfathers of A.I.’ for his contributions to the field.
The global A.I. research funding has seen a significant increase over the past decade, with investments reaching $70 billion in 2020.
The 'significant increase' was noted by many experts as a major shift in the field of artificial intelligence.
The United States and China are the leading funders of A.I. research, accounting for over 60% of total investment.
Top industries contributing to A.I. research funding include technology, healthcare, and finance.
Notable initiatives include the 'European Union's Horizon 2020 program' and the 'U.S. National Science Foundation's AI Institute.'
The growth in A.I. research funding is driven by applications in automation, data analysis, and decision-making.
Dr. Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist and one of the pioneers in the field of deep learning.
He is currently a professor at the Université de Montréal and holds the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence.
Bengio's work focuses on developing algorithms for artificial neural networks, which are essential components of modern deep learning systems.
His contributions include the development of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and long short-term memory (LSTM) models, which have improved speech recognition and natural language processing capabilities.
Bengio’s project will center on building risk mitigation technology for A.I. systems. At the same time, other recipients, such as ‘Zico Kolter,’ a member of OpenAI‘s board and head of Carnegie Mellon University‘s machine learning department, will explore specific phenomena like adversarial transfer, which occurs when attacks developed for one A.I. model are effectively applied to others.
Tackling Barriers in A.I. Safety Research
Schmidt Sciences’ new program hopes to tackle some of the barriers slowing down A.I.’s safety research community, such as a lack of quality safety benchmarks, adequate philanthropic and government funding, and academic access to frontier A.I. models. To bridge the gap between academia and industry, researchers hope that leading A.I. companies will incorporate safety research breakthroughs as they continue developing the technology’s wide-ranging capabilities.
‘I totally understand the need for speed in this kind of fascinating field,’ said ‘Daniel Kang,’ an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But open communication and accurate reporting should be a bare minimum for makers of frontier models, according to the professor.
The Importance of A.I. Safety
As Silicon Valley‘s unabashed frenzy for A.I. continues, some worry that safety concerns have taken a backseat. Earlier this month, a global A.I. summit in Paris dropped ‘safety’ from its title as tech CEOs and global leaders gathered to praise the technology’s economic potential.
‘I worry that competitive pressures will leave safety behind,’ said Belinsky. Schmidt Sciences’ new program hopes to tackle some of these concerns and bring attention back to the importance of A.I. safety research.
- observer.com | Eric Schmidt’s $10 Million Bet on A.I. Safety
