Baidu’s Andrew Ng and Singularity’s Neil Jacobstein say this time, the hype about artificial intelligence is real.

Artificial intelligence is shaping up as the next industrial revolution, poised to rapidly reinvent business, the global economy and how people work and interact with each other.

Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and co-founder of education startup Coursera, and Neil Jacobstein, chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, sat down with The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Austin to discuss AI’s opportunities and challenges.

Here are edited excerpts.