Meet The 21-Year-Old Prodigy Building 'Empathic' AI For Telefonica

Pascal Weinberger in conversation with his team at Telefonica's "moonshots" division Alpha, where he heads AI research and development. Flying cars, augmented reality glasses and contact lenses that can detect diabetes: They're all innovations born out of Google X, the skunkworks division of Alphabet. Three years ago Spanish telco giant Telefónica established Alpha, a lab in Barcelona staffed by around 100 people, working in stealth on innovative technology that holds the promise of a potential new revenue streams. The person running all things AI at the lab is Pascal Weinberger, 21. Weinberger is originally from Germany and like many other computer programmers is self-taught.