Eric Schmidt Walks Back Claim Google Is Behind on AI Because of Remote Work

Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and executive chairman at Google, walked back remarks in which he said his former company was losing the AI race because of its remote-work policies. From a report: 'I misspoke about Google and their work hours,' Schmidt said Wednesday in an email to The Wall Street Journal. 'I regret my error.' Schmidt, who left Google parent Alphabet's board more than five years ago, spoke earlier at a wide-ranging discussion at Stanford University. He criticized Google's remote-work policies in response to a question about Google competing with OpenAI. 'Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,' Schmidt said at Stanford. 'The reason startups work is because the people work like hell.'

Video of Schmidt's talk was posted on YouTube this week by Stanford Online, a division of the university that offers online courses. The video, which had more than 40,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon, has since been set to private. Schmidt said he asked for the video to be taken down.

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