At first glance, Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of the DeepMind AI lab, seems a familiar type: the missionary entrepreneur and out-of-the-box scientist who emerges as the right person for a particular moment. In this case, that moment was when hardware and software and data aligned to make superintelligence possible. But Hassabis is hardly a conventional figure. He has devoted his life to creating a technology that he thinks has the potential to destroy the world. Hassabis agreed to talk with me about his quest, because he believes that societies will never trust inventors unless they understand what makes them tick. For almost three years, as I worked on my book The Infinity Machine, we met regularly at a pub near his home, in North London. We would climb a shabby wooden staircase to a room on the second floor, sit with cappuccinos under a once-grand chandelier, and spend two hours talking: me with an obsessively detailed list of topics to get through; Hassabis with his sparky riffs...
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