As an ex-Googler I'll say this: The problem with Eric Schmidt isn't (always) the particulars of the things he says. It's the smug I-know-best "boomer" tone he delivers it with, and the crass obliviousness to his relative position of privilege and power.

Googlers/Xooglers will recall the "my various houses" quip at TGIF some years ago which memegen had a field day with.

Also his multiple events where he brought in Kissinger to have "fireside chats" for Googlers to watch/attend.

In fact his "father knows best" attitude ties directly in with his Kissinger fixation: this realpolitik "practical" vision of a world of inevitable powerful forces that you just have to learn to ride with .. which is just really a skin over "might makes right" under another name. Kissinger was explicitly so, and Schmidt admired him for it. Who cares about million horrifically killed in Cambodia if America is stronger for it?

It's also not honestly all that far from the "Effective Altruism" stuff, too: some powerful person comes up with a system of "pragmatic" and utilitarian justifications for the forces-that-already-are and makes it sound like a programme-for-betterment when it's really just a method for their own further enrichment and ego satisfaction.

Many of us legitimately boo this. Not because we're naive. Or stupid. But because our own sense of agency in the world and democratic ethics means we see agency for collectives of people which work along broad and participatory lines. And because we "naively" believe in justice and maybe a vague Kantian notion of ethics which tries to treat other humans as ends in themselves.

Y'know. So-called basic enlightenment, modernist values.

The "inevitable AI" stuff is just an icing on an overall cake. Standing in front of a bunch of young people who still have energy and spirit and the ability to shape the world and telling them that the best way to shape the future is to accept the form that it's already taking and ride-along and profit is next level douchebaggery, even from Schmidt.

(I also have to muse out loud that the specific vile form Google has taken in the second decade of its existence relates to this same mentality. The Google of the founder's letter at IPO sounds nothing like the ... thing ... that exists now, and this seems to have everything to do with just yielding to what-is instead of making what-can-be)

Hating AI Is Good