AI recorded a Nobel moment earlier this month when the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, and his DeepMind colleague, John Jumper took home a joint Nobel Prize in chemistry. While the Nobel in physics went to Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” and machine-learning pioneer John Hopfield.
In a recent virtual interview with Axios, Hassabis said, “I’ve been thinking about this for decades. It was so obvious to me this was the biggest thing.” He added, “Obviously I didn’t know it could be done in my lifetime. … Even 15 years ago when we started DeepMind, still nobody was working on it, really.“
He said that the technology’s power has been clear for so long, and he’s amazed that it took so much time for the world to notice it.
Hassabis added, “Maybe it’s a watershed moment for AI that it’s now mature enough, and it’s advanced enough, that it can really help with scientific discovery.”
He said that AI may be overhyped for now, but the researchers who have worked behind the spotlight for years to make this possible justify their efforts.
He said AI is “still massively underrated in the long term,” as people don’t know its significant prowess.
Demis Hassabis has now moved to the driver’s seat for Google’s AI efforts and the DeepMind co-founders now run AI at both Google and Microsoft.
Later in the interview, he told his backstory and personal life, sharing that he wrote his first AI program when he was about 11 to help play the strategy board game Othello (Reversi) then later got top honors in computer science at Cambridge.
He shared that he was always interested in big questions, and his favorite subject was physics. Hassabis shared that if he could make artificial intelligence abundant, that would change the world.
