Mustafa Suleyman

ONCE upon a time he was just a “Cally Road kid,” but today a former Islington man has been appointed head of US giant Microsoft’s consumer-based artificial intelligence.

You may not yet have heard of high-tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, but you will.

He’s also written a powerful and important new book, The Coming Wave, already an international bestseller, that sings the praises of AI – but also warns of the terrible dangers.

Suleyman, 39, compares today with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four novel, written back in 1949 and concerned with the growth of totalitarian governments seeking total control.

He writes that with new technology everything is possible: “Billions of devices and trillions of data points could be operated and monitored at once, in real time, used not just for surveillance but for prediction.”

For a lad from a modest background Suleyman’s rise to prominence is extraordinary. As a young schoolboy he was running around the playground at his Thornhill primary school. He lived off the Caledonian Road with his dad, a Syrian-born taxi driver, two younger brothers, and his mum, a nurse, who he says helped inspire his work.

At 11 Suleyman won a place at state-run Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Barnet, not far from where his mum worked at Barnet hospital.

From there it was Mansfield College, Oxford, before dropping out at 19 to launch a highly praised national telephone counselling service for young Muslims. His supporters have included screenwriter Jemima Khan, BBC journalist Asad Ahmed and BBC Radio broadcaster Mishal Husain.

He’s definitely not just talk. In 2016, as part of a King’s Cross-based AI research group, DeepMind, Suleyman helped introduce a new system at his mum’s hospital. It was called a Streams app, which monitors inpatient blood test results and sends a “breaking news” alert to the phones of consultant nephrologists if acute kidney injury is detected. The system has now been taken up by the Royal Free.

The Coming Wave

At the time he told the Evening Standard: “My mum was a theatre nurse for 20 years at Barnet hospital. She was an old-school matron, very strict, but so focused on delivering genuine care. That was a massive inspiration to me, seeing how someone dedicated their life to delivering the best possible bedside care. When I told her what I was working on, she was really excited.”

His book describes how AI may pave the way for huge improvements in the quality of health care. “AI techniques can search through the vast space of possible molecules for elusive but helpful treatments,” he says.

He points to Halicin, an antibiotic created in 2020 with AI and named as HAL, after the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Former Tory leader William Hague described Suleyman’s book as “required reading for policy makers” in a review in the Times.

Today, Islington Councillor Paul Convery, vice chair of the policy and performance scrutiny committee, welcomed Suleyman’s remarkable success. Cllr Convery described him as “a great role model for people from similar backgrounds who with ability and ambition can make something of themselves. He did very well at Thornhill primary school, which is not surprising because it is a very good school. Then on to a very good secondary school in Barnet.

“Mustafa understood at the beginning what the future looked like. He got in on the ground floor and went to the top.”

Cllr Convery added that he understood why Suleyman left university early. “It was because he was eager to get on with things like the Muslim telephone helpline. Many people find that being at university can hold you back. I’ve heard that he praised his mum, who as a nurse inspired him and I say well done to her.”

By the age of 22, he was advising then London mayor Ken Livingstone on human rights policy and five years ago Suleyman was awarded the CBE for his work and influence.

Suleyman now lives in California close to where he works. In his book he writes that the fate of humanity stands in the balance.

“The discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, the harnessing of electricity – all of these were moments that transformed human civilisations, altering the course of history forever.

“And now we stand at the brink of another such moment as we face the rise of a coming wave of technology that includes both advanced AI and biotechnology. They promise to reshape our world in ways which are both awe-inspiring and daunting.”

Time magazine last September included him among the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.

• The Coming Wave. By Mustafa Suleyman (with Michael Bhaskar), Bodley Head, £25