The Ledger, every show
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.
shows 




every show 44 of 44
Eric Schmidt: Google prioritized work-life balance over winning
“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.”
Schmidt: Most of the world will use Chinese open-weight AI models
“China is competing with open weights and open training data, and the U.S. Is largely and majority focused on closed weights, closed data. That means that the majority of the world, think of it as the Belt and Road Initiative, are going to use Chinese models an…”
Schmidt: Chinese tech companies rely on illegal 996 work schedules
“The Chinese work-life balance consists of nine, nine, six, which is nine a.m. To nine p.m. Six days a week. By the way, the Chinese have clarified that this is illegal. However, they all do it.”
Schmidt: Chinese AI firms lack capital markets to fund $100M+ AGI data centers
“They're not pursuing crazy AGI strategies. Partly because of the hardware limitations that you've put in place, but partly because the depth of their capital markets don't exist. They can't raise, based on a wing and a prey, or a hundred million dollars, or a …”
Eric Schmidt predicts domain-specific AI superintelligence in 6 to 7 years
“I don't agree with the three years, but I do agree that it'll be maybe six or seven years.”
Schmidt: AI recursive self-improvement is 5 to 10 years away
“Not yet. I'm, I've funded a number of startups which claim to be close to it, but of course these are startups and you never know, which tells me it's five, 10 years.”
Schmidt: 80% of management turns over in a corporate turnaround
“The number is 80% of the management team will turn over in a turnaround.”
Schmidt: Future warfare will eliminate most fixed military infrastructure
“The rough way in which war will evolve is first things will have to be very, very mobile and very much not in fixed places. This takes out most of the military infrastructure that exists in the world.”
Schmidt: Ukraine used USVs to destroy Russia's Black Sea fleet
“If you look at the Maguro and some other boats that the Ukrainians used, They have essentially used USVs to destroy the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.”
Schmidt feared AdWords auction would bankrupt Google, imposing Friday cash limits
“I was absolutely convinced that this would bankrupt the company. And I was so convinced that I ordered a cash restriction period Where the only thing that you could do was spend money on Friday mornings at 10. You had to come to my office and you had to convin…”
Schmidt: Drone warfare will involve destructive waves before human land invasion
“I think that the way robot war, essentially, drone war will occur is there will be these destructive waves, but eventually humans are going to have to cross a line. They're going to have to invade.”
Schmidt: Novell presented different revenue numbers on his first day as CEO
“The reality, of course, hit on the first day, because I was presented with different numbers for revenue for the quarter than I'd been told when I was interviewing.”
Schmidt: Google made the decision to acquire YouTube in about 10 days
“We made the decision to purchase YouTube in about 10 days, right? Incredibly historic decision because we were ready.”
Schmidt: Shared CEO office with Google engineer until IPO
“So with the engineering story is that we stayed, we actually liked each other so much that he stayed as my office mate until we were a public company where I couldn't violate the various SEC laws.”
Schmidt: Google's early culture and perks mirrored Stanford Graduate School
“I think a fair statement is that the founders built the company in the image of what they saw at the Stanford Graduate School.”
Schmidt: Many Google AI, search, and maps initiatives came from 20% time
“Many, many initiatives in the company have come out of 20% time ideas. Much of the mapping work, many of the search ideas, many of the advertising Many of now the AI work have come from people working and practicing in new areas.”