Google DeepMind’s Lila Ibrahim says AI’s upside outweighs its risks

Most AI executives talk about what their models can do. Lila Ibrahim wants to talk about whether the rest of us are ready for it. In an interview with CNBC, the Google DeepMind executive said she believes the benefits of artificial intelligence outweigh the risks. She paired that optimism with a less flashy point: communities and workers need to be prepared for AI’s changing role in their lives. A new job title for a new kind of problem Ibrahim holds a role that didn’t exist at DeepMind until she stepped into it. She is the lab’s first Chief AI Readiness Officer. She took on the title after serving as DeepMind’s founding Chief Operating Officer. She joined the lab in April 2018 as its first COO. Before DeepMind, her résumé ran through Intel, the venture firm Kleiner Perkins, and the online learning platform Coursera. DeepMind is behind technologies like Gemini and AlphaFold, and the societal questions around tools like these are getting harder to ignore. Building AI “with” people, not “to” them Ibrahim’s pitch centers on collaboration. Her approach calls for involving communities and workers in how AI gets developed, rather than handing them a finished product and wishing them luck...