Mo Gawdat is someone you might trust with the future. An Egyptian writer and software engineer with a sweet sense of humour, he is also deeply serious about power and responsibility. That much is borne from first-hand experience. He was one of the architects of the current era in tech, spending 11 years at Google up to 2018, including five as chief business officer of “moonshot factory” Google X.
Great advances in artificial intelligence happened on his watch. It may be telling, then, that he no longer works in Silicon Valley. Instead, Gawdat warns of the dangers of AI in books, live appearances, and as the focus of documentary Chasing Utopia.
As per the title, he tries to stay hopeful, framing his ideas as the pursuit of progress rather than simply stalling the apocalypse. His favourite analogy for what AI could be is Kal-El, the starchild who grew into Superman: a blank canvas, counselled by wise human parents.