Chapter 1: Who is Demis Hassabis and why is he significant?
Sam, I think today we should talk about somebody who is one of the most important founders in the world, one of the most brilliant founders in the world, that nobody talks about.
I don't even know how to say this guy's name properly.
And he is one of the most important tech founders in the world. His name is Dennis Hassabis.
Is he currently the guy who's like warning people? Is he on like a podcast tour warning people?
No, no, no. He's pro-AI, so he's not warning people.
No, then I don't know anything about him. Enlighten me.
Okay, so this guy is... Demis the Menace is what I'm going to call this guy because this guy is an absolute animal. Okay, so I watched this documentary called The Thinking Game. It's on Prime Video if anybody wants to go watch it. I'd heard good things from some smart people, so I thought, okay, let me check it out.
And let me just first lay out my case for Demis as Billy of the Week because he's kind of legendary. Okay, so... I didn't understand how much of a prodigy this guy was. And this was a documentary that was like, you know, pretty straightforward.
But like this could have easily been a movie like The Social Network because The Social Network basically covered the most transformative, young, brilliant founder from the kind of 2004 to 2010 era, which is Zuck. And it talks about Zuck in college and how he's this kid and all the ups and downs he goes through trying to build this thing. Demis is maybe that guy now, him and Sam Altman.
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Chapter 2: What is the role of resourcefulness in entrepreneurship?
They're both basically two guys who are creating the most important technology of all time. You think those are the two guys? Those are the guys?
Chapter 3: What was the impact of Move 37 in AI development?
Well, Elon would be the other, right? So Elon's the obvious other person that needs a movie and has a crazy life. But this guy, I think, is the most underrated, less talked about for who he is. Okay, so who is he?
Chapter 4: How does AI contribute to solving protein folding challenges?
He started this company called DeepMind. DeepMind got bought by Google. And DeepMind is basically Google's AI Play. And the DeepMind team, which was basically a research team that was building AI, is the reason that OpenAI exists. It is the reason that ChatGPT exists. It is the reason Elon is interested in AI was very much because Elon met with Demis.
And basically, Demis big-dogged him a little bit. He was like, oh, yeah, I'm working on the most important thing ever. And Elon, who's building rockets and electric cars, he's like, I'm saving the planet. I'm going to space. That's my portfolio. And Demis said, well, what we're building will be the most important invention humans will ever make. It will be the last invention.
It's artificial general intelligence. So a computer that can think and learn better than humans. And the reason why this is called the last invention is because once you invent an artificial general intelligence, it's basically like its own little species. So it's Computers that can think and learn, they will then do the thinking and learning and inventing far faster pace than we will.
So they'll invent all the new shit after that. He has that conviction throughout the documentary. And he's had it since he was a kid. Okay, so here's the cool stories. That's the very basic setup, but here's the story. So he grows up, he's got these like hippie parents. His dad is a musician and they look like very like bohemian. He gets into chess and by the age of six,
He is one of the best chess players in the world.
Amongst all humans?
Yes. So first he wins the under eight championship when he's only six in Europe. And at one point he's ranked the second best chess player in the world for his age. So he's like elite, elite chess player as a young kid. And he uses his chess, he would go to the, his parents would basically drive him to these chess tournaments. He would win as this, and he looks tiny.
Even now he looks like baby faced. He looked like such a little kid when he's sitting there at these tables. And he would basically go win prize money. And then he used the prize money to buy his first computer, okay? So chess gets him a computer. When he gets a computer, he starts making games on the computer. He builds a chess game, builds up the little games.
And he starts a hacking club with friends at school. And he's basically like, wow, computers and chess, like this is my life.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of DeepMind's acquisition by Google?
Can you imagine your boy playing with him? Okay, so listen to this from Boy Wonder. So he gets into Cambridge, but he's too young to go. So he has to wait a year to go to Cambridge because he decides, I'm going to go to Cambridge. I'm going to study AI. He's like 14, 15 years old at this point. And in his gap, so he's like, they need him to wait a year. He can't go till he's 17.
So he says, okay, why don't I try to get a job? I'll work in the meantime. And I'm not going to do chess tournaments. I'm going to do something with computers. And so this company called Bullfrog, which made like the most popular computer games at the time in Europe, they were the number one production company of games. They held a contest. And it was also cool to see like,
gaming was so new at the time, the CEO of the gaming company was like, dude, there was no recruiters. We couldn't be like, hey, go get us the best game programmers. There were no game programmers. It wasn't even a job yet. And it just reminded me of like what the frontiers always look like. It's like little signals of you're in the right spot is when there's not even recruiters for the thing.
There's no agencies yet for the thing.
There's no name for the job. And for context, by the way, he's 50 years old now. He's 49. So we're talking late 80s.
Right. Yeah, yeah. Long time ago. Hey, I got something pretty cool to share with you guys. So if you're like me, you listen to podcasts or YouTube videos, you like to take notes, you're here to learn, and that's a lot of effort. Sometimes you're on the go and you can't do it. And so the folks at HubSpot who are sponsoring the podcast have done something pretty cool for you.
They have created the MFM Vault. It's a place to go find notes and resources that they pull from the different episodes that we do. So if we have a guest on that shares their five point framework, they write down those five points with the examples that the guests gave and they put the notes there for you. So if you want to access the Vault, it's totally free.
All you gotta do is click the link in the description below. And you can access all the notes and the stuff in the vault. We're going to keep adding to this, trying to make it better over time. Thank you to HubSpot. This is a very cool way for them to sponsor the podcast. But by instead of telling you to go buy their stuff, they're actually giving you something instead.
So he enters this contest, he wins, and he gets a job there.
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Chapter 6: What breakthroughs did AlphaGo achieve in the game of Go?
And the first game he works on is, did you ever play Rollercoaster Tycoon? Of course, yeah. So he was built, Europe had the equipment called Theme Park, and he built Theme Park with this guy. It became a smash hit when he's 16 years old. And his job in Theme Park, he was not building the park builder, but the guest logic.
So AI, basically, it's like, you're going to have a thousand guests walking around, but they need to do sensible things. Like a thousand sim characters like decided to go on a ride? Got it. Yeah, that are going into your theme park. So he's like, and so they were like, oh, just make him walk around on a random path. But he's like, no, no, no, this is AI. I want to work on AI.
So he goes, he makes it so that if you make the roller coaster too crazy, they'll puke. And the odds of them puking go up if there's a burger joint next to the theme, next to the roller coaster. And so he creates all this logic that was not in games at the time. Like this like very intelligent logic around the autonomous characters in this game.
And even the people there were like, dude, why do you care so much about this? And he says at the time, there's a line in the movie where he goes, today, the whole world agrees with something that I knew 20 plus years ago, that AI is the most important technology that we're ever going to build. And that that was the only thing that was worth working on. So even at the game companies working on AI.
Okay, so he's now 17. He can go to Cambridge. The guy who owns the company offers him a million pounds to stay. And he's like, I'm a poor kid.
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Chapter 7: How does AI predict protein structures and its implications?
I'm 17 years old. He offers me a million pounds, more than a million dollars. And this is back in the like... Yeah, so it's 8 million USD. Yeah, like a huge offer just to stay. And he's like, no, I want to go, I want to build AI. So he turns it down and he stays broke and he goes to college.
And at college, he basically meets this other guy, the only other guy he knew that was equally obsessed with AI and neuroscience and like how the mind works and then teaching computers to think like a human mind.
I thought you were going to say that he partied hard and hooked up with tons of girls.
He's like, we would drink beers, and we would play foosball, and we would talk AI. He's like, we were crazy.
This guy's perfect then.
Okay, so then he decides at some point that he's going to start this company. Now, nobody really believes in AI at the time. In fact, in the scientific community, AI was not a thing. Because it's not science, really. There's no like testable hypotheses that you could go do. You couldn't go into a lab and do AI. The entrepreneurship community also didn't really respect AI. It's this sci-fi topic.
There's been no commercial companies doing this. So there's nobody who believes in this. Well, guess who believes when nobody believes? Guess who loves a good old contrarian bet? Teal. If Teal becomes the first backer of DeepMind. Are you kidding me? No. So how legendary is Peter Teal? That he's the origin funder of DeepMind 2?
I think that people talk about this, but I don't think it talks about enough. where I think Tim Dillon's a comedian, where he was like, everyone thinks the president of the United States is most powerful, but there's one person who's never around, you can't see him, but he truly runs everything, and that's Peter Thiel. And he was saying that at Trump's inauguration, it was like J.D.
Vance, who's a Thiel guy, was all the CEOs, Thiel guy, Thiel guy, Zuck, Thiel guy. And it was like, Peter Thiel is the guy. And then I recently read a whole bunch of old quotes from him. And it's just like everything he says is timeless and has been true so often. He's like a city, dude.
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Chapter 8: What future opportunities exist in computational biology?
Dude, this storyline is as old as John Henry. Do you remember John Henry who was like, you know, the strongest man who was using the jackhammer through the mountain trying to race the new steam engine who can like pile through stuff. And he's trying to beat the steam engine and he works so hard that his heart explodes. And that's like the story. It's the legend.
That's basically what happens, except the guy's mind exploded. Yeah, so this, like, storyline is perfect. So they sit down, and the game is going as usual. And they have a line from Eric Schmidt. So Eric Schmidt is from Google. He was the former CEO of Google. And a super technical guy. And Google had bought DeepMind at this point.
Dude, I saw the price. One of the greatest deals of all time, potentially.
So they bought it for, I think, 400 million pounds. So it was like, you know, 500-something million dollars. Yeah. And there's a great line from Demis in this. I don't know if you saw this part where they were like, his investors didn't want to sell. And he goes, he said this line that I really, like, it was kind of a frame breaker for me.
I don't think most people, when they listen to this line, would even think twice about it. But for me, it was a little bit of a frame breaker. He was basically in like a frenzy. He's like, this is so important. There's so much to do. My life is only so long. I want to see this happen. And he's like, we have so much to do.
If we can just get this funding and be left alone to go do what we needed to do, then I might actually get to see this thing in my lifetime. And that's what matters. And he's like, what's a few billion dollars for five years extra of my life getting to work on this?
He was like, would you trade a few billion dollars? He goes, I could sell for a few extra more billion and make billions of dollars. But let me ask you something. If you're going to die, would you spend billions of dollars to live an additional five years? Of course you would. That's what he said he was going to do here. Such a good line.
I actually... Someone changed my perspective on having children. Someone was like, do you think you're going to love your kids when they're born? I was like, yeah. He's like, well, then why wouldn't you have them sooner so you have an additional life with them?
Time with them. Yeah. He has another line later that's kind of like this. He goes... He was talking about like... what a new breakthrough that they were going to have. And he's like, it's going to be the most exciting thing ever. How will we get sleep? I won't be able to sleep. And he was just like that fired up 10 years into the mission.
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