An AI@GSB Special: Demis Hassabis Thinks We’re in the ‘Foothills of the Singularity’

When Demis Hassabis pitched DeepMind to a few venture capitalists back in 2010, the business plan was almost comically audacious. “Step one: Solve intelligence. Step two: Use it to solve everything else,” he recalls in a conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business with Stanford University President Jonathan Levin. “And people were quite confused. But we really meant it.” Sixteen years later, the “broad arcs” of that plan have gone “unbelievably well,” says Hassabis, a chess prodigy turned video game developer turned neuroscientist turned Nobel Prize-winning AI pioneer. Today he’s on a mission to create “the ultimate tool for science,” building on his decision to give away AlphaFold, the groundbreaking AI system that predicts the structures of proteins. The future, Hassabis says, is just around the corner: “Ten years from now, I think we’ll realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity now.” Chapters: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:31 A career built around one big question 00:06:19 Building DeepMind and pursuing AGI 00:10:09 The breakthroughs that made AI feel possible 00:14:48 From AlphaGo to scientific discovery 00:17:15 Why AlphaFold was given away for free 00:24:00 The “foothills of the singularity” 00:26:41 Public concern, disruption, & AI’s promise 00:29:59 How AI could reshape work and entrepreneurship 00:34:12 Competition, safety, & regulating frontier AI 00:41:19 Expanding AI’s benefits globally 00:45:28 Preparing society for AGI 00:48:21 What should AI leave untouched? 00:51:01 Advice for the first AI-native generation 00:54:19 Conclusion See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.