Lifestyle Alll Fields - AI is about maximising human potential, says Google DeepMind COO: ‘If I could rebrand AI, I would’
From growing up as a child of immigrants in the United States, to her father’s disadvantaged childhood and her sister’s physical disability – Lila Ibrahim’s personal experiences have helped her understand the power of technology to level the playing field for differently privileged groups.
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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.
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?”
“If you are watching a video on YouTube and the next recommendation comes up, that’s artificial intelligence. If you have an Android device and the battery lasts longer, there’s artificial intelligence in there optimising the battery.
“When things have value, we don’t call it artificial intelligence. It just is part of the experience,” she said.
“Even if you think of organising the world’s information – Google and search – that’s all about artificial intelligence, trying to unlock knowledge and make value for consumers and customers.
WILL GENERATIVE AI REPLACE HUMANS?
In December 2023, Google took its AI technology to the next level. It launched Gemini, which the company says is the world’s first multimodal AI system able to analyse and generate text, images, video, audio and code.
Its more advanced features require an AI premium plan. For example, “I can put in a picture, a video, audio… an entire book like War And Peace, and then interact with the AI in a way that is like a conversation,” said Ibrahim.
For instance, AI can help to analyse and summarise the huge chunks of information from various media and answer any specific questions you may have.
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