Demis Hassabis
Kirsty Young interviews Demis Hassabis, artificial intelligence expert, neuroscientist and entrepreneur.
Kirsty Young's castaway is Dr Demis Hassabis. An artificial intelligence researcher and co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, he is also a neuroscientist, a computer games designer, an entrepreneur, and in his youth, a world-class chess player.
Born in 1976, he was introduced to chess aged four and, by the age of twelve, was the world's second-highest ranked player for his age. With his winnings, he bought himself a PC and taught himself to code. After taking his A Levels two years early, before going to university he worked on one of the most successful computer games of the 1990s, Theme Park. He graduated from Cambridge with a double first, and returned to the computer games industry, founding his own company in his early twenties.
His passion had long been artificial intelligence and he says everything he's done has been part of a long-term plan to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". He gained a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience where he deliberately chose to study topics where AI had failed so far: memory and imagination. After stints at MIT and Harvard, he co-founded his company in 2010, which was then acquired by Google in January 2014. In March 2016 their computer programme, AlphaGo, beat a world champion Go player at the game having taught itself how to play through a combination of two techniques - deep learning and reinforcement learning.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
Last on
Clips
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Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’
Duration: 02:17
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Demis Hassabis: ‘It’s a like a gym for the mind’
Duration: 02:04
Music Played
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CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE
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Vangelis
Tears in Rain
Performer: Vangelis.- Blade Runner Soundtrack.
- Warner Music UK.
- n/a.
- 12.
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Nicky Ryan, Roma Shane Ryan, Eith Ni-Bhraonain
Watermark
Performer: Enya.- Watermark.
- Universal.
- n/a.
- 1.
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Tammy Wynette with The KLF
Justified and Ancient
- Tammy Wynette: The Definitive Collection.
- Epic.
- n/a.
- 9.
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The Prodigy
The Narcotic Suite: Skylined
- Music for the Jilted Generation.
- XL.
- n/a.
- 12.
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Michael Nyman
The Garden is Becoming a Robe Room
- The DraughtsmanÂ’s Contract.
- Virgin Records.
- DVEBN 55.
- 4.
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Queen
Who Wants to Live Forever
- A Kind Of Magic.
- EMI.
- n/a.
- 6.
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Daft Punk
Motherboard
- Random Access Memories.
- Columbia.
- n/a.
- 10.
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Hans Zimmer
First Step
- WaterTower Music.
- Sony.
- n/a.
- 17.
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BOOK CHOICE
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
LUXURY ITEM
A solar-powered chess computer
Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Kirsty Young |
Interviewed Guest | Demis Hassabis |
Producer | Cathy Drysdale |
Broadcasts
- Sun 21 May 2017 11:15³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4
- Fri 26 May 2017 09:00³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4
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