Who is Demis Hassabis, the man behind Google DeepMind?

When you've heard about artificial intelligence, have you ever considered that a single individual could truly shape the future of this technology, despite billions of dollars and pressure from entire continents? Yet, in the case of Demis Hassabis, the founder of Google DeepMind, some argue that his personal impact was decisive, even in an era when we believe that only collective forces and large systems can change the world. The prevailing idea today is that AI is the product of huge teams, algorithms that learn from unimaginable amounts of data, and an almost impersonal global race. But Hassabis' story turns everything on its head: it shows that, even in 21st-century Silicon Valley, a single mind can truly steer the course of a technology destined to change civilization. In his biography of Hassabis, Sebastian Mallaby focuses precisely on this question: Amidst commercial pressures and dizzying technological advances, can one man truly shape the development of artificial intelligence? Hassabis was not predestined for technology. Born in London to a Chinese mother and a Greek-Cypriot father, by the age of eleven he was already an International Chess Master, and as a teenager he created video games that would go on to sell millions of copies. His obsession: to understand how the human mind works and then replicate it in a machine. In 2010, he founded DeepMind with two friends, starting with a single room and very little money. Just four years later, Google bought the entire company for half a billion dollars. But this is not just a business story. When DeepMind created AlphaGo, the first program capable of beating a world Go champion, Hassabis insisted on an almost ethical approach: no bombastic announcements, no science-fiction promises, only concrete results and total transparency about the capabilities and limitations of his creation. And here comes the startling fact: during the game between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, move 37 in the second match is dubbed “the hand of God” by experts, because no human would ever have thought of that solution. Hassabis, on the other hand, sees it as proof that AI can lead humanity down entirely new paths—but only if guided by minds that feel responsible for what they create. We usually think that an industry like AI, dominated by giants such as Google and Microsoft, leaves no room for individual heroes. But Hassabis' story shows that, at crucial junctures, the course of events can still depend on a person's courage, idiosyncrasies, and even fears. There is one perspective that is often missing from these stories: we wonder whether it is right to entrust so much decision-making power to a single mind, even when that mind appears brilliant and visionary. If the next steps in AI depended on someone’s personal obsessions, would we be comfortable? Or would we really prefer it to be just a matter of algorithms and committees? When a single person alters the trajectory of technology, the responsibility becomes almost a cosmic burden. On Lara Notes, there is a gesture you won’t find anywhere else: I’m In. It's not a heart; it's not a thumbs-up. It's your declaration: this story matters to you. And if tomorrow you tell someone the story of Hassabis and AlphaGo's “Hand of God,” you can report it on Lara Notes: Shared Offline is the way to say that that conversation really mattered. This comes from The Economist and has just saved you over 3 minutes compared to the original versions.