Madhumita Murgia

And I will say, before we go to DeepMind specifically, that, you know, there is something to be said about Google being the grown-up in the room.

Stevens pointed out some of the really interesting personality quirks around the leaders.

They didn't want to found a company.

They aren't necessarily sort of business operators.

And now they're trying to shepherd these nearly trillion dollar companies and these huge, powerful technologies and, you know, fielding calls from CEOs of banks and trying to fight the US president.

It's like way beyond the ken of like probably what these guys as postdocs.

at universities were thinking would happen with their lives, right?

Whereas, you know, Google has been through this for decades.

It knows how to navigate the legal system.

It knows how to deal with politicians moving through the White House over many, many administrations, you know, staying the course and sort of shepherding this technology into the economy in a way that the others, they aren't sort of making us feel very confident in their ability to do that.

Yeah, it's so interesting because I think here in the UK, we are so proud of the achievements of Demas.

And I'm not sure it's reflected in the same way in Silicon Valley.

But here, you know, his story is legend, really, because he was, you know, a child chess genius, video game designer, and then went on to study computer science and then completely pivot and got PhD in the neuroscience of imagination.

Like, this is a polymath, like the word was invented for him, right?

He...

seemed like he could turn his mind to anything and master it.

And the one through line, his sort of passion, his mission had always been AI.

But what's really interesting is like even sort of 10, 15 years ago, this was a fringe thing.

And for him to even found a company and get investment from, you know, he's talked to Elon Musk about it.

He eventually got some money from Founders Fund, which Peter Thiel runs.