This week's guest is Mohammed Marikar. We explore the meaning and implications of AI. Mohammed reflects on AI’s rapid evolution from narrow tools to general-purpose systems, while balancing optimism about efficiency with concern for lost human development and resilience. We probe questions of education, faith, parenting, and morality, discussing how AI intersects with character formation, spiritual life, and societal structures. The conversation ultimately highlights both awe at AI’s capabilities and anxiety about dependence, emphasizing the need for grounding in fundamental skills, moral frameworks, and embodied human experiences.

Mohammed is a technologist, investor, and AI leader with over 20 years of experience at the intersection of finance and technology. At the Royal Bank of Canada, he founded the bank’s first Innovation Lab in Europe, deploying its first agentic AI system in 2016, and also ran the bank’s UK academic partnerships, sponsoring PhD research in applied AI at leading universities, including Imperial College London.

On leaving RBC, Mohammed co-founded Neem Capital, an AI-native investment firm that connects global capital with high-impact opportunities in developing markets. He is also Head of Institutional Development at FLock.io, a decentralised AI company pioneering federated learning and privacy-preserving AI, where he helps bridge frontier AI research into institutional and commercial use cases.

In addition to his industry work, Mohammed serves as an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Southampton, where he trains PhD students at the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Sustainability on translating their research into industry applications.

A London native and Mathematics graduate of Imperial College, Mohammed began programming at the age of five and continues to tinker with open-source projects and white-hat hacking. He also sits on the board of The Brokerage, a social mobility charity helping young people access careers in finance and technology.

We’re excited to share a new sponsor: The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University, here in Cincinnati, is dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.