OUR Artificial intelligence could pose an existential risk to humanity, its former chief executive warned on Wednesday. GoogleEric Schmidt.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal Board of Directors Summit in London, Schmidt said he was concerned that artificial intelligence could pose an “existential risk.”

“Existential risk is defined collectively when many, many, many, many people get hurt or die,” Schmidt said at a conference in London. “There are scenarios not today, but pretty soon, where these systems can find zero-day exploits in cyberspace or discover new types of biology. Today it is fantasy, but this reasoning is real. And when that happens, we want to be prepared and make sure these things don’t get taken advantage of by bad people.”