Former CEO Eric Schmidt explains why Google fumbled its lead in AI

I'm no longer a Google employee. In this period of full disclosure, Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. And the reason startups work is because the people work like hell. And I'm sorry to be so blunt. There's a long history of companies winning in a genuinely creative way and really dominating a space and not making the next transition. It's very well documented. And I think that the truth is founders are special. The founders need to be in charge. The founders are difficult to work with. They push people hard. As much as we can dislike Elon's personal behavior. Look at what he gets out of people. I had dinner with him. He was flying that night at 10pm to have a meeting at midnight with X AI, right? Think midnight I I was in Taiwan. Different country, different culture. This is tsmc, who I'm very impressed with. And they have a rule that the starting PhDs, good physicists, work in the factory on the basement floor. Now can you imagine getting American physicists to do that with PhDs? Highly unlikely. Different work ethic. And the problem here, the reason I'm being so harsh about work, is that these are systems which have network effects. So time matters a lot. And in most businesses time doesn't matter that much. Right? You have lots of know Coke and Pepsi will still be around and the fight between Coke and Pepsi will continue to go along and it's all glacial.