I spoke to someone who uses two phones, but he uninstalled Twitter on both. He considers himself a ‘voracious’ consumer of podcasts but is careful about staying too long on the grid. Oh, and he recently co-founded an AI company — a software-as-services outfit.

Isura Silva is certainly no technophobe, nor is he a cheerleader of everything that Silicon Valley burps up. His insights into why technology could do our bidding, and not control our lives is refreshing. But I wanted to not just pick his brain on how he got to this place — into AI — but to understand his entrepreneurial mindset; why he is so optimistic when everything seems to be crumbling around him.

Isura considers social media as being potential forces of good. He and I disagree on this topic quite a bit. But he knows the downsides, first hand. So he aggressively filters the noise. He says he could slide back into technology controlling his time if he doesn’t take an aggressive stance. But there’s another area that Isura and I don’t see eye to eye – that AI could actually be beneficial to humanity, he believes. Which is why he co-founded an AI company in Sri Lanka. Sure, AI might free us of mundane tasks, I argued, but what about the dark side, of algorithms and machines replacing what makes us human?

“AI will eat the world,” Isura declared, understanding the irony.

Well, that’s exactly why I often talk to people like him. That’s why he’s featured on my latest podcast, and a longer version of our discussion here, on Medium.