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

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. He dropped out of a bachelor's degree, having "enrolled to keep my parents happy," but by 15 had already taken several remote courses in programming at MIT.