Pull The Plug…
“Eventually you say to the computer, ‘Learn everything and do everything,’” Eric Schmidt said Sunday in an interview with ABC News. “And that’s a dangerous point. When the system can self-improve, we need to seriously think about unplugging it.” - Fortune
Back to reality Eric…
In reality, modern AI systems are distributed across global, decentralized cloud infrastructure with no single power cord to sever, meaning that once an autonomous agent is deployed across redundant servers, “pulling the plug” is technically impossible for any single actor to execute effectively.
This also contradicts the very economic and geopolitical reality you (Eric Schmidt) helped build. In game theory, this is a classic “Prisoner’s Dilemma”: while the world collectively benefits from slowing down to ensure safety, every individual actor (country or company) is incentivized to race ahead for fear of falling behind. If the U.S. “pulls the plug,” China might not; if Google stops, OpenAI might not. Schmidt himself frequently lobbies for U.S. military dominance in AI to counter China, an admission that the lust for power and fear of an adversary often override safety concerns. Given that the technology promises trillion-dollar economic advantages and military superiority, it is highly unlikely that human leadership, driven by competitive greed and the desire for hegemony, would voluntarily permanently disable their most powerful asset.
What are these people smoking?