Skip to main content current edition: International edition The Guardian - Back to home Become a supporter Subscribe Find a job Jobs Sign in Search Show More Close with google sign in become a supporter subscribe search find a job dating more from the guardian: change edition: edition International edition The Guardian - Back to home browse all sections close Artificial intelligence (AI) DeepMind: 'Artificial intelligence is a tool that humans can control and direct' Co-founder of technology company insists AI is not a danger to humanity, but will help tackle lack of clean water, financial inequality and stock market risks Artificial intelligence robot out how to succeed at nearly 50 Atari computer games without any foreknowledge of how to play them.
 Photograph: Blutgruppe/Blutgruppe/Corbis Artificial intelligence (AI) DeepMind: 'Artificial intelligence is a tool that humans can control and direct' Co-founder of technology company insists AI is not a danger to humanity, but will help tackle lack of clean water, financial inequality and stock market risks Charles Arthur Charles Arthur @charlesarthur Tue 9 Jun ‘15 11.
29 BST Last modified on Wed 22 Feb ‘17 18.
11 GMT This article is 2 years old Fears that artificial intelligence will wipe out human beings are completely overblown, according to the co-founder of Britain’s DeepMind, who has insisted that the technology will help tackle some of the world’s biggest problems including accessing clean water, financial inequality and stock market risks.
 Mustafa Suleyman, who with Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg set up the London-based machine learning company that was bought by Google in January 2014 for £400m, mounted a spirited defence of the company’s successes.
 He told a conference on machine learning that “artificial intelligence, AI, has arrived.
 This isn’t just some brief summer for this technology, and it’s not about to go away again.
--
 AGI is a tool to massively amplify our ability to control the world.
” DeepMind, based by Kings Cross station in London, has developed a “generalised artificial intelligence” which was able to figure out how to succeed at nearly 50 Atari computer games without any foreknowledge of how to play them.
 Given inputs of just the score and the pixels on the screen, and control of the games buttons – again without any knowledge of their relevance – it was able to play as well as a human after a few hundred games.
--
 The company is also seeking to expand that categorisation so that when there are multiple recognisable objects in a picture it can describe them all in a single coherent sentence.
 But Suleyman said the idea that a machine-based artificial intelligence could take over decision and pose a threat to humans was “preposterous”.
 “Any talk of a superintelligent machine vacuuming up all the knowledge in the world and then going about making its own decisions are absurd.