By Steve Rose
Publication Date: 2026-05-20 11:00:00
MIchael Wooldridge is like the teacher you wish you had: approachable, able to explain difficult things in simple terms, neither intimidatingly snooty nor obnoxiously cool, and genuinely enthusiastic about what he does. “I love when you see the light light up in someone when they understand something they didn’t understand before,” he says. “I find that incredibly gratifying.”
He meets a completely normal guy, which as an Oxford professor with more than 500 scientific articles and 10 books he clearly is not. Typically, his favorite work is his contribution to Ladybird’s Expert Books – an update of the classic children’s book series – about artificial intelligence. “I’m very proud of that,” he says, handing me a copy from his bookshelf. We are in his study in the rather urban computer science department at Oxford University on a sunny spring day. Maybe it’s the campus environment, but our discussion almost takes the form of a…
