Spotify’s AI Chief Wants to Remix Our Relationship With Discovery

When Ziad Sultan began thinking about artificial intelligence, there was no craze afoot. Not even a cultish flurry of excitement. Sultan, who is now Spotify’s vice president of personalization, responsible for a slate of new AI features for the audio streamer, first caught the bug in the early 2000s. He was 17, had just moved to Cambridge, Mass., from Beirut, was not yet fluent in English, and began studying this then-unfashionable topic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“That time …

ai features artificial artificial intelligence audio discovery features intelligence personalization president relationship remix spotify streamer thinking vice president