Source: cnbeta.com
Eric Schmidt, who served as Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011 and left Alphabet's board last year, reinvented himself as a tech advisor and investor to become a tech advisor and investor in the U.S. Department of Defense. The New York Times has published a new article about Schmidt's work after he left his famed company, and if you're curious about how the former CEO is passing the time now, it's worth reading.
Schmidt, who has long advocated the application of technology and artificial intelligence to defense efforts, is now advising the U.S. government and investing in businesses to achieve this goal. He is now a member of two governmental advisory committees that promote technology adoption at the Department of Defense and invest his personal wealth in military tech startups, according to The New York Times.
Mr. Schmidt is pushing the way forward with a Silicon Valley worldview, where advances in software and artificial intelligence are key to solving almost every problem.
He portrays himself as a technologist who doesn't believe in the success of retirement—and now he has the time and insight to solve one of America's toughest problems.
An important area of interest for Schmidt was the use of technology to reduce the monotony of military personnel.
"The way to get to know the military is that soldiers spend a lot of time looking at screens. And human vision is not as good as computer vision," he said. "It's crazy, you get people to serve, we spend a lot of training these people and getting them into basically monotonous jobs, it's crazy."
Some of the technical solutions he proposes are reportedly relatively simple — such as replacing cumbersome whiteboard planning processes with software solutions — while in other areas, his proposals are more ambitious, in conflict with the military's slow nature.
Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that progress had been slow. "My military friends have strangely told me that they're progressing incredibly fast, showing you the difference in time frame between the world I'm in and the world they're in." he said.
Some of these technologies have been controversial. After leaving Google, Schmidt invested in Rebel Defense, a startup that analyzes videos taken through drones. There are clear similarities here to the Project Maven project, when Google helped the Pentagon develop software that automatically analyzes drone footage. In the face of protests from employees, Google refused to renew the contract.
Schmidt's involvement in the advisory committee has also faced criticism over concerns that his ongoing ties to Google's parent company Alphabet may have a conflict of interest. Although Schmidt has left the board, he still owns $5.3 billion in alphabet stock and technically still receives an annual salary of $1 from the company as an advisor. Critics say the former CEO may use his influence to recommend alphabet technology to the organization, but Schmidt said he abides by rules to avoid conflicts of interest.