The former head of Google said artificial intelligence-powered tools may prove an existential threat to society.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that the development of generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Bard, could have disastrous consequences in the near future. Schmidt is the latest tech CEO to claim artificial intelligence is a threat to society as the technology comes under greater scrutiny from lawmakers and the White House.

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Schmidt framed the technology as an "existential risk" during an appearance Tuesday at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit. The risk could include "many, many, many, many people harmed or killed," Schmidt said.

Schmidt led Google from 2001 to 2011.

"There are scenarios, not today, but reasonably soon, where these systems will be able to find zero-day exploits in cyber issues or discover new kinds of biology," Schmidt said, "Now, this is fiction today, but its reasoning is likely to be true. And when that happens, we want to be ready to know how to make sure these things are not misused by evil people."

"Zero-day exploits" are gaps in cybersecurity that hackers could abuse.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in March that it was good for the public to be a "little scared" of ChatGPT. Altman has pushed for national and international regulators to track the technology's development.

A majority of Americans say artificial intelligence poses a threat to humanity, according to a May 17 Ipsos/Reuters poll.