I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me,

Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, today it's become obvious that artificial intelligence,

AI, is going to play a huge part in our future.

But not everyone's entirely clear, or indeed in agreement on how that will pan out.

And a lot of conversations around AI and machine learning still reference the idea of a

dystopian future where Terminator-style robots are our overlords. But don't panic.

My guest today says that's all rubbish.

Neil Lawrence is the Deep Mind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge.

A mechanical engineer by training, Neil's story is one of contrasts.

He's worked for both academia and Amazon.

He's plied his trade on oil rigs and helped set up data workshops in Africa.

Perhaps most improbably, he's both a keen cyclist and a petrolhead.

During his career, Neil's also been involved with deploying AI and machine learning

across fields as varied as movie animation, Formula One strategy and local

planning applications. And he says ultimately all his efforts are about making a difference to our

everyday lives, explaining as scientists and academics, we do well to focus less on getting the

front cover of scientific journals and more on influencing the front cover of the local paper.

Professor Neil Lawrence, welcome to Life Scientific.

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