Inflection
- Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of Google's DeepMind, says we'll have AI assistants within five years
- The AI pioneer predicts AI will boost productivity and 'intimately know your personal information.'
- His thoughts come as many flock to OpenAI's ChatGPT to help with their jobs and improve their lives.
The AI revolution is here — and one pioneer of the technology says it will be accessible to all in the upcoming years.
Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, Google's AI division, told CNBC during an interview that everybody is going to have their own AI-powered personal assistants within the next five years as the technology becomes cheaper and more widespread.
In particular, Suleyman, now the CEO of Inflection AI, the tech startup behind an AI chatbot called Pi, said that everybody will have access to an AI that "knows you," is "super smart," and "understands your personal history."
Suleyman, who co-authored a book titled "The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma" that documents the development of AI, even predicts that AI will be able "preserve things in its working memory." In turn, he says the technology can help make people's daily lives just a little bit easier.
"It will be able to reason over your day, help you prioritize your time, help you invent, be much more creative," he said. "It will be a research assistant, but it will also be a coach and companion."
As the technology continues to evolve, Suleyman believes that AI's role in people's lives will go beyond just personal assistance.
"The way I see it is that in 5 years, everybody is gonna have their own 'chief of staff,'" he said, which refers to a high-level position at a company that is intended to help executives make better business decisions, according to the Harvard Business Review. Some consider a chief of staff a right-hand person to the boss — and that's what an AI version could be.
Like a chief of staff, Suleyman said that AI will "intimately know your personal information, be completely aligned with your interests, and help you manage you manage and process all the information you need."
Suleyman didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment before publication when contacted through his company Inflection AI.
Suleyman's thoughts on AI come as users find novel ways to integrate generative AI technologies like OpenAI's ChatGPT into their lives.
Since ChatGPT came out last November, some have used the chatbot to help plan a family vacation, find an apartment, and lose weight.
Others have turned to the AI to help do their jobs. Workers across industries have used ChatGPT to develop code, create marketing strategies, and generate lesson plans. Some employees have even admitted to using the chatbot to complete work tasks without telling their bosses.
Suleyman isn't the only tech leader who sees the revolutionary potential in AI.
Bill Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft, wrote in a seven-page letter that AI is "as fundamental" as the creation of the internet, and predicts that the technology can help make the jobs of healthcare workers and teachers easier.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, told investors on an earnings call earlier this year that the technology has "enormous potential" to "affect virtually everything we do" at the iPhone maker.
As for Suleyman, he says it's only a matter of time before everybody has access to AI's impressive capabilities.
"It's going to feel like having intelligence as a commodity — cheap, widely available, making everyone smarter and more productive," he said.