From banking to healthcare and entertainment, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming almost every aspect of life. At the same time, there are many who fear its impact on jobs, privacy and safety.
In a decade shaped by AI, how should we understand this powerful emerging technology?
That was the question I posed to Lila Ibrahim, the chief operating officer (COO) of Google DeepMind, a research laboratory based in London that builds Google’s next-generation AI system, when she was in Singapore in September.
Ibrahim’s answer surprised me. Instead of talking tech, she told me a deeply personal story.
“I grew up as the eldest daughter to parents who had immigrated to the United States. Growing up, I was the dark kid in my school, the foreigner. English was my second language… My entire childhood, I was always an outsider,” said Ibrahim.
Her dad grew up in a Lebanese orphanage. His future should have been over, she said. Instead, he overcame a disadvantaged childhood “to design heart pacemakers that saved millions of lives because he had an engineering degree”.
“That’s what technology has always meant to me,” said the 55-year-old tech leader. “The reason I went into engineering is, I felt, how can I use technology to solve problems?”
WHAT IS AI, REALLY?
“Actually, if I could rebrand artificial intelligence, I would,” she laughed.
“I’d like to think of it as moving away from the name ‘artificial intelligence’. Sometimes, we get caught up with trying to define it, when instead we should say, how are we going to deliver the value?”
