Putting a temporary pause on artificial intelligence development would only hand an advantage to competitors in China, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, after more than 1,000 researchers signed a letter warning of the consequences of moving too quickly on AI research.

But Schmidt said he wasn’t in favor of the six-month pause as it would “simply benefit China.”“What I am in favor of is getting everyone together ASAP to discuss what are the appropriate guardrails,” he said.