A few months ago, a video of a private tech conference leaked online. The speaker was Eric Schmidt, discussing tech entrepreneurship, his past experiences, and how to make money today.
The transcript of the video can be found here.
Frankly, the conference was painful to watch, not because of technical issues, but because of the terrible advice and ideas Schmidt shared. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard such pronouncements from (ex-)CEOs and managers, especially those from Silicon Valley. However, this time, I sensed something amiss, a disconnect from reality among those who manage significant companies and products.
This feeling has been amplified by the “war” between US and Chinese tech companies, particularly evident in the OpenAI vs. DeepSeek situation. This disconnect can be illustrated by five key quotes from Schmidt’s conference.
If TikTok is banned, here’s what I propose each and every one of you do.
Say to your LLM the following: ‘make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines.’
That’s the command.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
This boils down to: “Rob fast, Sell faster, and Iterate quickly”.
We’ve heard this kind of rhetoric more frequently in recent years, especially from companies that profess to love open source, yet readily clone and rip off entire GPL or MIT projects without attribution, effectively taking credit for work they haven’t done. While this has always been a problem, there’s now an open embrace of leveraging open-source information and solutions for profit, especially as developers become less concerned about the licensing rights they grant.
This quote also exemplifies the “move fast and break things” mentality, which, in my view, has eroded trust in software. This approach suggests that software is no longer designed for long-term user benefit, but rather for short-term investor gains—a demonstration of what a company could do, until they inevitably break (or abandon) their latest “innovation.”
This quote encapsulates much of what’s wrong with the modern software industry over the past decade.
Schmidt’s next statement sent chills down my spine:
In the example that I gave of the TikTok competitor…
and, by the way, I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music…
what you would do if you’re a Silicon Valley entrepreneur […] is, if [your business] took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up.
But, if nobody uses your product, then it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.
To me, this translates to: hypocrisy and theft are core competencies for a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The bolded phrases highlight this hypocrisy.
Further evidence of this hypocrisy can be seen in his comments about European regulation:
Europe is screwed up because of Brussels. It’s not a new fact.
I spent 10 years fighting them.
And I worked really hard to get them to fix the EU act and they still have all the restrictions that make it very difficult to do our kind of research in Europe.
yet, later he states:
So in my career, I helped Microsoft get broken up and it wasn’t broken up.
And I fought for Google to not be broken up and it’s not been broken up.
Hypocrisy, indeed.
Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. I was in Taiwan, different country, different culture. And they have a rule that the starting PhDs coming out of the good physicists work in the factory on the basement floor. Now, can you imagine getting American physicists to do that? The PhDs, highly unlikely.
It’s true that people generally prefer a life outside of work, a fact that seems to irritate many CEOs these days. This is ironic, considering the increasing number of CEOs demanding a full-time return to the office, even as they themselves work remotely…
I won’t belabor this point, but perhaps Schmidt has forgotten that Nvidia, with over 80% of its staff working remotely, continues to dominate the competition in AI and gaming chips.
It seems Silicon Valley is less concerned about employees and more interested in “employaves”—perhaps a fitting term for the current climate.
Based on these quotes, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur emerges as a hypocrite, a liar, and a thief. Someone willing to climb over others to appear a giant.
The hard truth: these individuals are not giants, and never will be. They suffer from a false sense of self-importance, much like, perhaps, the US itself?
Let’s hear from Schmidt:
Countries with a lot of money and a lot of talent, strong educational systems, and a willingness to win.
The US is one of them, and China is another one.
It’s no secret that California, particularly Silicon Valley, is losing its grip on tech dominance. Silicon Valley’s golden age as an innovative hub for hackers is fading.
The US-China tech war, especially the OpenAI vs. DeepSeek debacle, is farcical. Humanity won’t achieve AGI without collaborative effort, particularly in scientific resources and energy consumption. Furthermore, I believe we deserve to see evidence of cutting-edge technologies through scientific papers, source code, and open weights, rather than having them locked behind a $200 paywall.
This secrecy reveals a key point: the US, and Silicon Valley in particular, fear losing their perceived top spot. Especially on the Tech field, and AI as the New Battleground.
We need more insightful discussions from individuals like Denis Assabis of DeepMind, where interviews resemble science courses rather than the kind of vapid advice I just witnessed.
The drive for ‘winning’ at all costs, as exemplified by Schmidt’s remarks, naturally leads to a focus on maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs. In this context, the idea of a ‘CEO-bot’ becomes less far-fetched…
In ML terms, what could be the cost function of a good CEO-bot?
The cost function for a CEO might be simpler than that of an engineer: maximize profits, monitor engineering performance monthly and adjust accordingly, keep abreast of news and future trends.
It would be interesting to explore how an AI CEO would perform. Especially as it can fits the dreams of Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs: no exhuberant salaray, an intelligence that do not sleep or eat, that do not take the plane each time he needs to sign contracts or go to an expensive garden party…
Just imagine the significant savings that could be realized with just one salary.
And, the icing on the cake, no more personality cult and no more bullshit on over-the-top conferences!
Could be great.
Just saying! ;-)