Neither the public or the tech giants pushing artificial intelligence understand its long-term implications, warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Google has removed its pledge not to use artificial intelligence for weapons development and surveillance, but its executive said will base AI threats on its continued research.

Google has made one of the most substantive changes to its AI principles since first publishing them in 2018. In a change spotted by The Washington Post, the search giant edited the document to remove pledges it had made promising it would not "design or deploy" AI tools for use in weapons or surveillance technology.

Google’s updated AI ethics policy removes its promise that it won’t use the technology to pursue weapons and surveillance.