Jürgen’s main goal since he was 15 has been to build an AI smarter than himself, then retire. On the way there, as scientific director at IDSIA, he and his research group have been at the forefront of modern machine learning since the early 90s, including the first deep networks to win international competitions in pattern recognition which have revolutionized handwriting recognition, speech recognition, machine translation, and image captioning. He is the recipient of numerous awards, and advises governments on AI and how it’s about making lives longer, healthier, easier, and happier.