Episode
Demis Hassabis wanted to solve intelligence. Then came ChatGPT.
- Podcast
- Machines Like Us
- Published
- Aug 18, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3083
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
When Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, his mission was simple: solve intelligence, then use it to solve everything else. What began as a scientific quest would eventually become a fierce global AI race. Today, DeepMind is owned by Google and is one of the world’s leading AI labs. Journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby spent years interviewing Hassabis, his collaborators, rivals and critics for his new book, The Infinity Machine. It tells the story of the remarkably small group of people who shaped modern AI. When we recorded this conversation, Hassabis was still CEO of DeepMind, caught between the science he wanted to pursue and the commercial race Google needed him to run. Hours later, he announced he was stepping down as CEO to become Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) chief scientist.