Lila Ibrahim says she may be the only person anywhere with the title Chief AI Readiness Officer. She moved into the role earlier this year after serving as Google DeepMind's chief operating officer. As she told CNBC's Julia Boorstin, "I don't think I could do this job if I didn't believe that the benefits will outweigh the risks." For almost a decade she has helped DeepMind advance AI while grappling with the thorny questions that come with it. Her new focus is not about DeepMind's own readiness, but about helping the wider world understand and adapt as AI moves from the lab into daily life.
Ibrahim points to AI showing up in places like scientific research, weather forecasting, education and workplace productivity. To her, the central question isn't rising capability; it's ensuring the public can shape the ways the technology gets used. "While I might not know what it will do, I know that we still can - we have the agency to shape how we get there," she said, adding, "You can't shape the right future unless you do so with the communities that it's going to impact."
And for workers staring at headlines about automation, her nudge is to get hands on. "You have to start using AI yourself and create the time and space to do it," she said. "You don't have to be the smartest in the room."
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Inside DeepMind, Ibrahim applies the same mindset. The biggest shift in her own day is using AI to handle briefing documents. "I went into engineering partly because I didn't want to have to read and write a lot, and the ability to be able to synthesize in a way that I can absorb information very quickly has been transformational, not only for me but the team that has to prepare that," she said. The payoff, she added, is freeing people to spend more time on the big thinking.
She orients teams around three questions:
That last one is the human talent piece, and she calls it critical. "That's what we need to hire for; we need to reward. This is what we want to continue developing in our employees," she said.
It applies to her, too. "AI can help automate all of my tasks, but it cannot automate my Tuesdays," Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim connects this to her two teenage daughters, arguing that learning has to start well before a first job. "They're going to inherit the technology we're developing, and yet they're not getting a voice in how this is being taught to them, how it's being integrated into their schools or into their life, so I think I would love us to see schools lean in a bit more to work with the teachers," she said. Teachers, she added, should lead students in exploring where AI fits, and students need to "grow up more literate in what the technology is and isn't, and also what are responsible use cases for it."
She also reflects on a career that began as an electrical engineering graduate student, moved to work on Intel's Pentium processor, and now centers on AI at Google DeepMind. The lesson she draws is about adaptability. So much changed in her lifetime, she said, and the next generation will see the same.
Her takeaway: nurture curiosity, a love of learning and resilience. "One of the things that I think is going to be important is continuous learning," she said.
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