Lila Ibrahim, the chief AI "readiness" officer at Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)'s DeepMind, may be the only person in the world holding that title. She says she would not have taken the role if she did not believe the scales of AI would ultimately tip toward the positive. "If I didn't believe the benefits would outweigh the risks, I don't think I could do this job," she said.

Ibrahim spent nearly a decade helping Google DeepMind build artificial intelligence and stay ahead of the thorny ethical questions, and even outright existential ones, surrounding this rapidly advancing technology. Today, she focuses on whether workers, schools and communities are ready for what comes next. Earlier this year, Ibrahim moved from her role as chief operating officer of Google DeepMind into her new position. She says the job is not about DeepMind's own level of AI readiness, but about helping the rest of the world understand and adapt, because change is accelerating and AI is moving out of the lab and into more areas of daily life, from scientific research and weather forecasting to education and workplace productivity.

For Ibrahim, the question is not whether AI will become more powerful, or exactly how it will. The more important question, she says, is whether people have a say in how it is used. "While I may not know what it will do, I know that we still can—we have agency to shape how we get there," she said. But she added: "You can't shape the right future unless it's with the communities that will be affected."

Her advice for workers facing headlines about AI-driven layoffs and automation is simple: start using the technology. "You have to start using AI yourself, and create the time and space for it. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room," she said.

How the DeepMind corporate team uses AI every day

Ibrahim and her team at DeepMind put this into practice every day. For her own daily work, she says the "most transformative" AI use case is briefing documents. "I went into engineering in part because I didn't want to read a lot and write a lot, and being able to synthesize information in a way that lets me absorb it quickly has been transformative—not just for me, but for the teams that have to prepare those materials," she said. "Given how much is going on now and how fast-paced it is, that may not necessarily be where every person creates the most value. Being able to be more efficient there, and then freeing everyone up to do the work... the big thinking... that's a much better use of their time."

Ibrahim breaks down her approach to daily AI use cases into three questions, and asks them of every team member: How do you use AI? What would help you use it more? Where are you not using AI? She says the third question touches on the talent element and is crucial. "This is exactly the standard we need to hire for; the things we need to reward; and the things we want employees to keep developing," she said. She added that this applies to her as well. "AI can automate all my tasks, but it can't automate my Tuesday," Ibrahim said.

With two teenage daughters, she says the AI learning process needs to begin long before people enter the workforce. "They will inherit the technology we are developing, but they have no say in how it is taught to them, or how it is integrated into school or life. So I would like to see schools work more actively with teachers," she said. "Teachers must always take the lead with students in discussing where the reasonable boundaries of AI lie," she said. But she added that students need to "grow up understanding more about what this technology is and isn't, and what responsible use cases look like."

Looking back on her own career path—from graduate student in electrical engineering, to working on the design of Intel's Pentium processor, to now working at Google DeepMind and in AI—Ibrahim said: "So much has changed in our lifetimes, and the next generation will experience the same. So all we can do is teach them to love learning, stay curious, and be resilient, knowing that change is coming and that they can actually play a role in how it happens." "I think one thing that will be very important is continuous learning," she said.