{"id":538902,"date":"2026-04-19T05:34:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T05:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/538902\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T05:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T05:34:31","slug":"silicon-valley-has-no-monopoly-on-ai-brainpower-thats-why-demis-hassabis-is-happy-to-stay-in-the-u-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/538902\/","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley has no monopoly on AI brainpower. That\u2019s why Demis Hassabis is happy to stay in the U.K."},"content":{"rendered":"

When Demis Hassabis was 6 years old, he remembers his father giving him the age-old reassurance prompt used every day by millions of parents around the world\u2014\u201cdo your best.\u201d For a young Hassabis, already showing the precocious talents that were to culminate in his becoming one of the most important artificial intelligence leaders in the world, \u201cdo your best\u201d opened up a whole host of possibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a bit of an extreme person,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I took it in a way [that\u2019s] extreme and logical. I was sort of thinking: \u2018What is your best? And how do I know I\u2019ve done my best? It must mean to the point of complete exhaustion, just prior to near-death. Then you\u2019ve done your best, have you? Isn\u2019t that logical?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hassabis was speaking at an event in London hosted by\u00a0Intelligence Squared\u00a0(there is a joke about Hassabis being \u201cintelligence cubed\u201d). Alongside him was Sebastian Mallaby, author of a new biography of Hassabis,\u00a0The Infinity Machine. \u201cAI is the most interesting transformation in the world, and Demis Hassabis is the most interesting figure in AI,\u201d Mallaby said when asked, \u201cWhy now?\u201d about the book.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing his best\u201d\u2014to the point of exhaustion\u2014has been a guiding mantra for Hassabis\u2019s life. Interviewed by\u00a0Fortune\u00a0in February<\/a>, the cofounder of Google<\/a> DeepMind<\/a> and Isomorphic Labs revealed that he has two workdays\u2014daytime hours that most of us do, and a 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift to execute \u201cside projects\u201d and other smart ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing all my chess training [Hassabis was a recognized master-level chess player by the age of 13], that\u2019s the way I think about life. In a very considered way, planning back from your goal, breaking that down into sub-goals. I think it\u2019s generally applicable to life, or at least that\u2019s what I\u2019ve tried to do, and it\u2019s been pretty effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being\u00a0effective while based not in the global home of AI innovation\u2014Silicon Valley\u2014but in London, has raised eyebrows. Surely, after DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014, a move to Mountain View would have been a natural next step?<\/p>\n

Not for Hassabis, who has argued that there needs to be more than one center of thinking in the world if we are to correctly balance the risks and opportunities of AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a bit of an underdog in me,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to show that I\u2019m passionate about the U.K. and that London and the U.K. could do this. But the main thing was: I knew there was the talent here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew we would have the field to ourselves for about four or five years, the formative years of DeepMind, and we had this incredible talent that was being overlooked in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd with the success of DeepMind and a few other companies here, it\u2019s shown that deep tech can be viable outside of Silicon Valley. Of course, the U.S. giants have realized this, both the VCs and the big tech companies, and they\u2019ve invested now\u2014many of them have their European head offices here in the U.K. and in London.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2010, when DeepMind was founded, Hassabis was already convinced that AI would be the transformative technology it has turned out to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe planned for success even back in 2010, which seems crazy, because nothing was working,\u201d he said. \u201c[But that\u2019s] how it\u2019s turned out. And the people that are making it shouldn\u2019t just be from 20 square miles of the U.S. It\u2019s going to affect the entire globe. So, I think a global perspective on AI, what it should be used for, how it should be deployed, the ethics of it, the technology itself, [is important].<\/p>\n

\u201cWe contribute to that by having a big base here and thousands of researchers, and we\u2019ve just opened a beautiful new office just around the corner as part of making that conversation global, even within Google, and hopefully for the whole field.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although Hassabis has said he likes nothing better than a commercial battle (when ChatGPT launched ahead of Google Gemini his response was, \u201cThis is war\u201d), he is more motivated by the scientific discovery aspects of artificial intelligence. \u201cSolving disease<\/a>\u201d and the climate crisis are, he believes, fundamental challenges AI can tackle.<\/p>\n

There is also the issue of safety, particularly with the approach of the next level of AI: artificial general intelligence. \u201cAt the back of my mind, I\u2019ve got this gnawing feeling that there\u2019s something much more important, much bigger than the commercial race, which is getting AGI safely over the line for humanity and to make sure that the benefits fully outweigh the risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, you know, I\u2019m going to try. We\u2019re only one actor in this now; there\u2019s five or six [other] leaders, and there\u2019s China as well, and the Chinese labs. And so I think in the next few years, the story is still to be written on how this is going to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be more cooperation and coordination at an international level, ideally\u2014although that\u2019s very hard with geopolitics as it is today\u2014around safety topics and debates around the benefits versus the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mallaby is asked at the end of the hour-long discussion whether the world can trust Hassabis with such a gargantuan task.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I can say with pretty good authority\u2014having not only talked to him for more than 30 hours but also talking to 100 other people around Demis, including bumping into old friends of mine who had kids at the same school as Demis\u2019s kids\u2014I really do know the person next to me extremely well. And I\u2019m very confident in saying that his values are good. He wants this\u2014first of all, for AI to be good for society. And secondly, his primary motivation is scientific discovery. And that\u2019s what he\u2019s dreamt of from the beginning. That is who he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

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