Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone’s cofounder and CEO, spoke Thursday about the ethical implications of artificial technology, warning that countries and leaders need to come together on AI to prevent its misuse.
Schwarzman said he wondered about the “astonishing power of AI” and what it does to the human condition. One downside of the technology is that criminals, or rogue states, have access to AI, he said. Criminals are generally not very bright, but with AI they become not so stupid anymore, he said. “That’s a problem for the rest of us,” Schwarzman said.
AI also could impact national security, the Blackstone CEO told a standing-room audience at the Faena Hotel in Miami. Schwarzman pointed to the war in Ukraine and the use of drones. “You could actually have this kind of sci-fi war of machines at a certain point. How do you interfere with that?” he said.
Schwarzman was one of several executives speaking Thursday at the FII Priority Miami Summit. About 850 people, including entrepreneurs, politicians and investment bankers, attended the conference to discuss how advancements in AI, robotics, health care, finances, and sustainability can be integrated into a global society.
Schwartzman, who spoke on the panel “Board of Changemakers: A Roundtable of Global CEOs,” talked of the movement to create a centralized, supranational institution to oversee AI. “If you don’t have everybody pretty much on board, you can have major countries not acting with a kind of cooperative sense; [then] they can make a real mess elsewhere,” he said.
Schwarzman is not a technologist but one of AI’s early backers and a proponent of the technology. The PE billionaire has donated about $500 million to AI education and research, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. This includes a $350 million gift to MIT in 2018 followed by a grant to Oxford that ultimately totaled over £190 million, equivalent to roughly $240 million. The exec’s enthusiasm for AI is so well-known that Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business Network anchor and global markets editor, who moderated the panel, quipped that Schwarzman could be called “the father of AI.”
Artificial intelligence has been around for decades. But it wasn’t until OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 that it became a phenomenon. When ChatGPT was introduced, it had the equivalent human IQ of 180 to 200, Schwarzman said. In three to four years, the AI’s IQ will be 12 ,000. “So, the idea that we’re going to be dealing with a technology that can have that kind of profound impact really is worthy of some thought,” he said.
Schwarzman talked about how he learned of the technology. In 2015, he met Jack Ma, the Alibaba cofounder, who “gave him a road map” of a technology that was called artificial intelligence, Schwarzman said: “I had never heard those two words used, and I started learning about it.” There were many different attitudes toward this new technology, Schwarzman said; Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, was very cautious about it while Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, IBM’s then CEO, was very enthusiastic. Bill Gates was in the middle.
“How could you have such different views on the same technology? So, I spent a bunch of time learning about it,” he said.
Schwarzman emphasized that AI will likely have a profound impact on society and humanity, especially health care. For instance, the production of drugs could triple. Marcelo Claure, founder and CEO of Claure Group, who also spoke on the panel, said AI will allow humans to re-create the human body “molecule by molecule.”
Schwarzman later spoke about real estate. Blackstone is the largest owner of commercial real estate in the world and the number one builder of data centers for AI globally, he said. Many businesses have called for their employees to return to the office. The average office building is 20% vacant, Schwarzman said. “I don’t know why people don’t want to go back to work. I mean, I love going to work. I’m a little bit of a deviant,” he said.
