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

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. These are production breakthroughs."