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. From a report: “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’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.

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Source: Slashdot – Google Ex-CEO Eric Schmidt Says Curbs on Chinese Hiring Hurts Tech