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

Amol Rajan speaks to Mustafa Suleyman, the British Artificial Intelligence pioneer about ensuring AI is aligned to human interests and makes the world a better place.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ 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 Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ. You can listen on the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ 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 Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ 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 TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewÄ¢¹½¶ÌÊÓÆµ on social media.

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

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23 minutes

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Fri 9 Jan 2026 23:06GMT

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