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Demis Hassabis

CEO · Google DeepMind

Claims
48
Episodes
2
Shows
2
Named items
1

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book / likes

The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“I love that area of biology. There’s people, there’s a great book by Nick Lane, one of the top experts in this area called The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution.”

Lex Fridman Podcast · 23 Jul 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Demis said.

48 transcript-backed records

04 / belief

We have systems I think that can do incremental hill climbing, and that’s a kind of bigger question about is that all that’s needed from here, or do we actually need one or two more big breakthroughs.

“We have systems I think that can do incremental hill climbing, and that’s a kind of bigger question about is that all that’s needed from here, or do we actually need one or two more big breakthroughs.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

05 / belief

I think compute, there’s the amount of compute you have for training, often it needs to be co-located, so actually even bandwidth constraints between data centers can affect that. So there’s additional constraints even there and that’s important for training, obviously the largest models you can, but there’s also because now AI systems are in products and being used by billions of people around the world, you need a ton of inference compute now.

“I think compute, there’s the amount of compute you have for training, often it needs to be co-located, so actually even bandwidth constraints between data centers can affect that. So there’s additional constraints even there and that’s important for training, obviously the largest models you can, but there’s also because now AI systems are in products and being used by billions of people around the world, you need a ton of inference compute now.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

08 / belief

I think to the extent that it can predict the next frames in a coherent way, that is a form of understanding, not in the anthropomorphic version of, it’s not some kind of deep philosophical understanding of what’s going on, I don’t think these systems have that, but they certainly have modeled enough of the dynamics, put it that way, that they can pretty accurately generate whatever it is, eight seconds of consistent video that by eye, at least at a glance, is quite hard to distinguish what the issues are.

“I think to the extent that it can predict the next frames in a coherent way, that is a form of understanding, not in the anthropomorphic version of, it’s not some kind of deep philosophical understanding of what’s going on, I don’t think these systems have that, but they certainly have modeled enough of the dynamics, put it that way, that they can pretty accurately generate whatever it is, eight seconds of consistent video that by eye, at least at a glance, is quite hard to distinguish what the issues are.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

09 / belief

New types of solar material, solar panel material room temperature superconductors has always been on my list of dream breakthroughs, and optimal batteries. And I think a solution to any one of those things would be absolutely revolutionary for climate and energy usage.

“New types of solar material, solar panel material room temperature superconductors has always been on my list of dream breakthroughs, and optimal batteries. And I think a solution to any one of those things would be absolutely revolutionary for climate and energy usage.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

11 / belief

Then maybe he got inspired by what AlphaGo was doing to then conjure this incredible inspirational moment, captured very well in the documentary about it. And I think that’ll continue in many domains where there’s this, at least again for the foreseeable future, of the humans bringing in their ingenuity and asking the right question, let’s say, and then utilizing these tools in a way that then cracks a problem.

“Then maybe he got inspired by what AlphaGo was doing to then conjure this incredible inspirational moment, captured very well in the documentary about it. And I think that’ll continue in many domains where there’s this, at least again for the foreseeable future, of the humans bringing in their ingenuity and asking the right question, let’s say, and then utilizing these tools in a way that then cracks a problem.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

12 / belief

Actually, I think we’re going to enter an era of AI-generated interfaces that are probably personalized to you, so it fits the way that you, your aesthetic, your feel, the way that your brain works and the AI kind of generates that depending on the task.

“Actually, I think we’re going to enter an era of AI-generated interfaces that are probably personalized to you, so it fits the way that you, your aesthetic, your feel, the way that your brain works and the AI kind of generates that depending on the task.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

13 / belief

I agree and I would love to see a lot of people, all of the other labs talk about science, but I think we’re really the only ones using it for science and doing that.

“I agree and I would love to see a lot of people, all of the other labs talk about science, but I think we’re really the only ones using it for science and doing that.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / evaluation

Proteins fold in milliseconds in our bodies, so somehow physics solves this problem that we’ve now also solved computationally. And I think the reason that’s possible is that in nature, natural systems have structure because they were subject to evolutionary processes that shape them.

“Proteins fold in milliseconds in our bodies, so somehow physics solves this problem that we’ve now also solved computationally. And I think the reason that’s possible is that in nature, natural systems have structure because they were subject to evolutionary processes that shape them.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

16 / recommendation

What you want to be able to do is potentially anything in that game environment. And I think the only way you can do that is to have generated systems, systems that will generate that on the fly.

“What you want to be able to do is potentially anything in that game environment. And I think the only way you can do that is to have generated systems, systems that will generate that on the fly.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

17 / uncertainty

Some things may turn out to be, and hopefully way easier than we thought, but it may be there’s some really hard problems that are harder than we guessed today, and I think we don’t know that for sure.

“Some things may turn out to be, and hopefully way easier than we thought, but it may be there’s some really hard problems that are harder than we guessed today, and I think we don’t know that for sure.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / evaluation

Of course people arguing about that now and mind’s quite a high bar and always has been of can we match the cognitive functions that the brain has? So we know our brains are pretty much general Turing machines approximate, and of course we created incredible modern civilization with our minds.

“Of course people arguing about that now and mind’s quite a high bar and always has been of can we match the cognitive functions that the brain has? So we know our brains are pretty much general Turing machines approximate, and of course we created incredible modern civilization with our minds.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

19 / evaluation

Along with relentless shipping of that progress is being very successful and it’s unbelievably competitive, the whole space, the whole AI space, with some of the greatest entrepreneurs and leaders and companies in the world, all competing now because everyone’s realized how important AI is.

“Along with relentless shipping of that progress is being very successful and it’s unbelievably competitive, the whole space, the whole AI space, with some of the greatest entrepreneurs and leaders and companies in the world, all competing now because everyone’s realized how important AI is.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / evaluation

Because then it veers more from just engineering to true research, and research plus engineering, and that’s our sweet spot and I think that’s harder.

“Because then it veers more from just engineering to true research, and research plus engineering, and that’s our sweet spot and I think that’s harder.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

21 / evaluation

Of course that’s why we pioneered, and what DeepMind is sort of famous for, using games as a proving ground. That’s partly because it’s efficient to research in that domain.

“Of course that’s why we pioneered, and what DeepMind is sort of famous for, using games as a proving ground. That’s partly because it’s efficient to research in that domain.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

23 / belief

Obviously, society is adding more data all the time to the Internet and things like that. I think that there’s a lot of scope for creating synthetic data.

“Obviously, society is adding more data all the time to the Internet and things like that. I think that there’s a lot of scope for creating synthetic data.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

24 / belief

Perhaps chaining thought, lines of reasoning, together and using search to explore massive spaces of possibility. I think that’s kind of missing from our current large models.

“Perhaps chaining thought, lines of reasoning, together and using search to explore massive spaces of possibility. I think that’s kind of missing from our current large models.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

28 / belief

In my view, the only sensible approach when you have huge uncertainty is to be cautiously optimistic and use the scientific method to try and have as much foresight and understanding about what’s coming down the line and the consequences of that before it happens.

“In my view, the only sensible approach when you have huge uncertainty is to be cautiously optimistic and use the scientific method to try and have as much foresight and understanding about what’s coming down the line and the consequences of that before it happens.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

29 / belief

I think the next versions of this over the next year, 18 months, we’ll maybe have some contextual understanding of the environment around you through a camera or a phone or some glasses.

“I think the next versions of this over the next year, 18 months, we’ll maybe have some contextual understanding of the environment around you through a camera or a phone or some glasses.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

32 / belief

Actually my thesis, and that paper particularly that started that area of imagination in neuroscience, was showing that first of all memory, at least human memory, is a reconstructive process.

“Actually my thesis, and that paper particularly that started that area of imagination in neuroscience, was showing that first of all memory, at least human memory, is a reconstructive process.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

33 / belief

I think we’re getting to the stage where our systems could help the best human scientists make their breakthroughs quicker, almost triage the search space in some ways.

“I think we’re getting to the stage where our systems could help the best human scientists make their breakthroughs quicker, almost triage the search space in some ways.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

34 / belief

We have those implicitly internally in various safety councils that people like Shane chair and so on. But it’s time for us to talk about that more publicly I think.

“We have those implicitly internally in various safety councils that people like Shane chair and so on. But it’s time for us to talk about that more publicly I think.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

35 / belief

I’m hoping we’re going to see a lot more of this kind of transfer, but I think things like getting better at coding and math, and then generally improving your reasoning.

“I’m hoping we’re going to see a lot more of this kind of transfer, but I think things like getting better at coding and math, and then generally improving your reasoning.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

37 / belief

I think if a capability like that was discovered through red teaming or external testing, independent testers like government institutes or academia or whatever, then we would have to fix that loophole.

“I think if a capability like that was discovered through red teaming or external testing, independent testers like government institutes or academia or whatever, then we would have to fix that loophole.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

38 / belief

If ChatGPT and chatbots hadn’t gotten the interest they ended up getting—which I think was quite surprising to everyone that people were ready to use these things even though they were lacking in certain directions, impressive though they are—then we would have produced more specialized systems built off of the main track, like AlphaFold and AlphaGo, our scientific work.

“If ChatGPT and chatbots hadn’t gotten the interest they ended up getting—which I think was quite surprising to everyone that people were ready to use these things even though they were lacking in certain directions, impressive though they are—then we would have produced more specialized systems built off of the main track, like AlphaFold and AlphaGo, our scientific work.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

39 / evaluation

I think the history of human endeavors has been such that once you know something’s possible it’s easier to push hard in that direction, because you know it’s a question of effort, a question of when and not if.

“I think the history of human endeavors has been such that once you know something’s possible it’s easier to push hard in that direction, because you know it’s a question of effort, a question of when and not if.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

40 / recommendation

I think that’s actually one of the areas where a lot more research needs to be done, the kind of mechanistic analysis of the representations that these systems build up.

“I think that’s actually one of the areas where a lot more research needs to be done, the kind of mechanistic analysis of the representations that these systems build up.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

42 / evaluation

The good news is that with the popularity of the recent chatbot systems, I think that has woken up many of these other parts of society to the fact that this is coming and what it will be like to interact with these systems.

“The good news is that with the popularity of the recent chatbot systems, I think that has woken up many of these other parts of society to the fact that this is coming and what it will be like to interact with these systems.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

44 / evaluation

I think we’re still in the nascent stage of this, of data curation and data analysis and actually analyzing the holes that you have in your data distribution.

“I think we’re still in the nascent stage of this, of data curation and data analysis and actually analyzing the holes that you have in your data distribution.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

45 / recommendation

Part of the issue is that with these very general systems, there’s so much surface area to cover about how these systems behave. So I think we are going to need some automated testing.

“Part of the issue is that with these very general systems, there’s so much surface area to cover about how these systems behave. So I think we are going to need some automated testing.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

46 / recommendation

I think that maybe in the next three, four, five years, we would also want air gaps and various other things that are known in the security community. So I think that’s key and I think all frontier labs should be doing that because otherwise for rogue nation-states and other dangerous actors, there would obviously be a lot of incentive for them to steal things like the weights.

“I think that maybe in the next three, four, five years, we would also want air gaps and various other things that are known in the security community. So I think that’s key and I think all frontier labs should be doing that because otherwise for rogue nation-states and other dangerous actors, there would obviously be a lot of incentive for them to steal things like the weights.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

47 / evaluation

I think we don’t know how long AGI is going to be. We always used to say, back even when we started DeepMind, that we don’t have to wait for AGI in order to bring incredible benefits to the world.

“I think we don’t know how long AGI is going to be. We always used to say, back even when we started DeepMind, that we don’t have to wait for AGI in order to bring incredible benefits to the world.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

48 / prediction

I will say that when we started DeepMind back in 2010, we thought of it as a 20-year project. And I think we’re on track actually, which is kind of amazing for 20-year projects because usually they’re always 20 years away.

“I will say that when we started DeepMind back in 2010, we thought of it as a 20-year project. And I think we’re on track actually, which is kind of amazing for 20-year projects because usually they’re always 20 years away.”
Speaker
Demis Hassabis
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast
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