Who is Demis Hassabis, the AI whiz with Nobel Prize
Demis Hassabis, co-founder and head of Google DeepMind, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating AlphaFold—an AI that predicts protein structures and is changing how scientists approach medicine and biology.
DeepMind also made headlines earlier with AlphaGo, the first AI to beat a world Go champion.
From child chess champ to PhD neuroscientist
Born in 1976 to a Greek-Cypriot father and Chinese-Singaporean mother, Hassabis was a chess champ at four.
He studied computer science at Cambridge and earned a neuroscience PhD from UCL, where he co-founded DeepMind in 2010.
Hassabis on AI's potential and challenges
Hassabis's work on deep reinforcement learning helped AIs learn by trial and error—think Atari games or AlphaGo's big win in 2016.
He believes artificial general intelligence could arrive within 10 years, transforming fields like healthcare and energy.
But he's also vocal about developing AI responsibly, pointing out challenges like energy use and social impact while leading DeepMind's global research from London.