California magazine’s EditorinChief Pat Joseph in conversation with Professor Stuart Russell, head of UC Berkeley’s Center for HumanCompatible Artificial Intelligence, about both the tremendous promise and considerable perils of artificial intelligence.

In 2023, TIME magazine counted Stuart Russell among the 100 Most Influential People in AI. He is coauthor, with Peter Norvig, of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the standard text on AI, and the author of Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control, judged among the best science and technology books of 2019. A professor of electrical engineering and computer science and holder of the SmithZadeh Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley, he is also an adjunct professor of neurological surgery at UC San Francisco and ViceChair of the World Economic Forum’s Council on AI and Robotics.

California magazine is published by the Cal Alumni Association, UC Berkeley’s alumni association. Learn more at californiamag.org.