Human-like artificial intelligence is still a long way off, but Greg Brockman believes the time to start thinking about its safety is now. That’s why, after helping to build the online-payments firm Stripe, he cofounded OpenAI along with Elon Musk and others. The nonprofit research group focuses on making sure AI continues to benefit humanity even as it increases in sophistication. Brockman plays many roles at the firm, from recruiting to helping researchers test new learning algorithms. In the long term, he says, a general AI system will need something akin to a sense of shame to prevent it from misbehaving. “It’s going to be the most important technology that humans ever create,” he says, “so getting that right seems pretty important.”

—Mike Orcutt