(OPINION) One of the biggest threats facing the planet is a super-pandemic, warns Google’s AI chief. Mustafa Suleyman is the billionaire founder of the computer giant’s artificial intelligence division but warns it’s not robots that pose the most danger to mankind.

He claims the ability to cook up a deadly pandemic at home is likely to become commonplace before the end of this decade. He told the Diary of a CEO Podcast: “That’s where we need containment.

We have to limit access to the tools and the know-how to carry out that kind of experimentation. “We really are experimenting with dangerous materials. “Anthrax is not something that can be bought over the Internet that can be freely experimented with.

“The very best of these tools in a few years time are going to be capable of creating new synthetic pandemic pathogens and so we have to restrict access to those things.”

Discussing the future of genetic engineering, he warned: “I think that the darkest scenario there is that people will experiment with …synthetic pathogens that might end up accidentally or intentionally being more transmissible;

they can spread faster, or be more lethal…” Similarly, he said advanced AI technology is getting cheaper and easier to obtain at an alarming rate thanks to the tech being made “open”.