Demis Hassabis
speaker
3,420 appearances
27 recordings
18 series
first heard Feb 2024
last heard 7 Jul
Demis Hassabis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 23 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 16.
Appearances
It says Demas himself is a figure apart.
It is not by coincidence that he has chosen to remain in London, far from Silicon Valley's hype and commotion.
And so he is telling the author how important stories are to him.
In fact, he said you should read one of his favorite novels, which is Ender's Game, to understand him.
And there's a great overview of Demis' accomplishments before he found this book.
Partway through his doctoral research in neuroscience, when he had already been a chess master, a video game designer, an amateur theoretical physicist, an entrepreneur, a computer scientist, and a five-time world champion...
Demis discovered a work of science fiction that made sense of who he really was.
The book was called Ender's Game, and it tells the story of a diminutive boy genius who is taken from his family and sent off to a space station.
There, at an intergalactic battle school, Ender is manipulated by adults, bullied by classmates, and put through extreme mental testing, all to discover whether he could shoulder responsibility for the survival of the human race.
By dint of grit and talent, Ender rises to the challenge.
Demis identified powerfully with Ender, and he suggested that I read Ender's game in advance of our first long conversation.
If I was to get to know him, I would have to understand his science fiction alter ego, to see the capacity for endurance, the ability to suffer and still soldier on.
Like Ender, Demis has dedicated every fiber of his being to the accomplishment of a mission, which is why he worked night shifts from 10 in the evening until 4 in the morning, in addition to his normal office hours.
Like Ender, Demis felt a burden of responsibility.
If you are trying to solve humanity's problems and understand the nature of reality, you don't have time to waste, he said.
And so I saw a few other people that had advanced copies of this book, and one of them was reading it and posting about it on X. And when I found this next excerpt, I think this description of this next excerpt was phenomenal.
It says, it's just wild how some people are playing a completely different game, 24-7, no off switch.
And so there's this excerpt from one of Demis' co-founders of DeepMind, Shane Legg, describing how unusual a figure that Demis is.
Says, Demas has extraordinary level of determination, unlike pretty much anybody.
Astonishing, incredible determination.
Showing 581–600 of 3,420 · page 30 of 171
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