Real Alpha
Watch modeSubscribed

Inside Blackstone · 2 min · Sep 29, 2026

Technology adoption takes longer when it needs capital

Eric Schmidt distinguishes the pace of invention from the pace of adoption, using self-driving cars as an example. Capital-intensive technologies take longer to spread than connectivity-based ones.

Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt is CEO and chair of Relativity Space, former Google CEO.

Scaled Google as CEO through 2011, now runs rocket maker Relativity Space and co-founded Schmidt Sciences.

About this segment

Eric Schmidt distinguishes the pace of invention from the pace of adoption, using self-driving cars as an example. Capital-intensive technologies take longer to spread than connectivity-based ones.

From “Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: The Road to Superintelligence”, Sep 29, 2026. Watch the full episode

“So, the diffusion rate is different from the invention rate.”
Eric Schmidtat 11:19 · Inside Blackstone11:19

Takeaways

  1. Self-driving cars were being designed in the 1990s.
  2. Broad adoption can lag invention by decades.
  3. Capital needs help explain why some technologies diffuse slowly.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 11:59AI self-improvement raises an alignment problem4:50
  2. 16:38Long reasoning is advancing, but original discovery remains hard4:08
  3. 24:38AI data centers are changing software economics and operations2:57
  4. 6:15Schmidt says to take more risks as you get older2:02

  5. 9:57Technology adoption takes longer when it needs capital2:13

  6. 22:25AI shifts programmers from writing code to architecting it2:24Up next
  7. 27:47Schmidt says students should study deep reasoning2:04

Transcript

From the transcript Inside Blackstone publishes with the episode.

  1. 10:03

    we sort of take for granted. Let's go back to the internet, because I think it's so interesting. You've been around the rise of the internet and other platform, you know, shifts, the rise at enterprise software, search, cloud computing, mobile, all of these major technological innovations. Why does this moment feel different to you? It's not different, it's just bigger. Bigger. The internet felt exactly the same as this.

  2. 10:27

    I started with mainframes, so that's how long I've been in this field. I've doing tech for 55 years, and when the PC revolution came along, everyone said, oh my god, this is this huge wave. It created Microsoft and Apple and so on and so on. This was 40 years ago, 45 years ago. So, these things take a while, and I think what, another example. Let's look at self-driving cars. Did you arrive at work today in a self-driving car?

  3. 10:55

    I did not. I suspect not, nor did I. And so, what do we think about that? When do you think we will? Well, it's beginning. Now self-driving cars… When do you think New York City? New York City will be one of the last ones. Okay. But it'll come. It’ll come. But it's coming in the different cities, including obviously Waymo and other competitors. But why do I mention self-driving cars? They were largely, they were designed in the 90s.

  4. 11:19

    The first real test of self-driving cars was 2004. So that's 22 years and going. So, the diffusion rate is different from the invention rate. So, the faster the diffusion rate, the sort of broad adoption, the quicker the societal change. Why does it occur in what I do first? It's because we're already connected, right? It's essentially a softer problem. It's just connectivity. The marginal cost of connectivity, given we're so connected, is very low.

  5. 11:50

    The incremental cost of connecting you and me is essentially zero. Boom, it just happens. It's straightforward economics. Whereas getting self-driving cars is a great deal of capital. It's hard, and so forth. People are working on it. Why 20 years versus zero years, and that's the answer.