Demis Hassabis and Sebastian Mallaby on The Quest for Artificial General Intelligence (Part One)

Demis Hassabis – CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind – is one of the world’s most visionary technologists. A child chess prodigy from North London, Hassabis was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using artificial intelligence to predict the complex structures of nearly all known proteins. His company DeepMind, now owned by Google, is at the forefront of the pursuit to build artificial general intelligence, and considered Google’s engine room of AI innovation. 

Sebastian Mallaby – former FT contributing editor, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of numerous books – has, for the past 3 years, explored the moral questions at the heart of AI and AGI, through the story of Demis Hassabis. With extensive access to DeepMind and its key players, Mallaby has conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with Hassabis and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. No other journalist has had such a closeup view of the opportunities, hype and threats AI could pose for us all. 

In April 2026 Hassabis and Mallaby came together for an intimate exploration of The Infinity Machine, Mallaby’s definitive account of Hassabis’ life and career. They discussed how he came to lead the world’s most ambitious AI lab, what the pursuit of AGI might cost as well as  what it might unlock, and what the story of Hassabis and DeepMind can tell us about humanity’s innate drive to develop new technologies.

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