Demis Hassabis

He rightly saw that as just a giant distraction to his mission.

And that leads us to another reoccurring theme throughout his life and throughout the book is just Demis is insanely practical.

He also is going to learn from every single experience that he has.

And so since Demas talked about starting a company, his ambition had been to build powerful AI, not just to design video games.

In founding Elixir, he was balancing his ambition against his practical side.

His ultimate dream was creating a Manhattan Project for Artificial Intelligence.

That metaphor, that idea, hey, we're going to create a Manhattan Project for Artificial Intelligence, that's used constantly throughout the book.

And in the middle of this, there's just a phenomenal line because I keep trying to hound the fact that Demis hates losing, that he is hyper-competitive.

This is how he describes what losing feels like to him.

It's like my soul is on fire.

And so one way that Demis learns to be more practical is by making a mistake.

He has this...

He has this idea for this game called Republic.

Republic was this overly ambitious, basically technically impossible idea of a game.

It's going to lead to the failure of his first company.

And there's just this really great point that he makes here.

Over the next couple of years, Republic's release date was pushed back repeatedly.

As the keeper of the vision, Demis fought a rearguard action against compromise.

And it took time for him to recognize the trap that his own charisma created.

Who would have thought that you can actually inspire people too much, he said.