Mustafa Suleyman, Artificial Intelligence pioneer: People should be healthily afraid of AI

BBC presenter Amol Rajan speaks to the British artificial intelligence entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman, Chief Executive of Microsoft AI.

He believes in the enormous potential of AI to be a force for good in the world, changing how we live and work for the better. He is committed to developing a humanist superintelligence, one that always works to serve people and never vice versa. But he remains clear about what he sees as the risks, issuing a warning that without the right ethical safeguards, AI could grow powerful enough to overwhelm humanity. "As somebody who’s deeply techno-optimistic, I invite people to be also healthily afraid and sceptical," he says.

The son of a London taxi-driver and a nurse, he dropped out of Oxford University and by his mid-twenties had co-founded DeepMind, the pioneering artificial intelligence research lab. By the time it was sold to Google four years later in 2014, it was worth a reported $400 million.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Amol Rajan Producers: Kate Collins, Laura Cooper and Lucy Sheppard Editor: Justine Lang

Get in touch with us on email [email protected] and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.

(Image: Mustafa Suleyman Credit: Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)