Demis Hassabis facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Demis Hassabis
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Hassabis in 2024
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| Born | 27 July 1976 London, England
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| Thesis | Neural processes underpinning episodic memory (2009) |
| Doctoral advisor | Eleanor Maguire |
| Chess career | |
| Country | England |
| Title | Candidate Master |
| Years active | 1988–2019 |
| FIDE rating | 2220 (March 2019) |
| Peak rating | 2300 (January 1990) |
Sir Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and business leader. He is the head and co-founder of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs. He also advises the UK Government on AI.
In 2024, Hassabis and John M. Jumper won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They received this award for their AI research that helps predict how proteins are shaped. Hassabis is a member of the Royal Society and has won many important awards for his work. These include the Breakthrough Prize and the Lasker Award. In 2017, he was honored with a CBE and named one of the Time 100 most influential people. In 2024, he was made a knight for his contributions to AI.
Contents
Early Life and Learning Journey
Demis Hassabis was born in London, England. His father was Greek Cypriot and his mother was Singaporean. From a young age, he showed great talent in many areas.
A Chess Prodigy
Hassabis was a child prodigy in chess. He started playing at age four. By 13, he reached "master" level, which is very impressive. He even led many of England's junior chess teams. He played for the University of Cambridge in important chess matches.
School and Self-Taught Skills
He went to Queen Elizabeth's School in North London. Later, his parents taught him at home. During this time, he bought his first computer, a ZX Spectrum 48K. He paid for it with his chess winnings! He taught himself how to program computers by reading books. He even wrote his first AI program for a Commodore Amiga computer. He finished his high school exams two years early, at just 16.
Starting in Video Games
Cambridge University asked him to take a year off before starting college because he was so young. So, Hassabis began his career in computer games. He joined a company called Bullfrog Productions. He started by designing levels for a game called Syndicate.
At 17, he helped design and was the main programmer for the game Theme Park (1994). This game was a big hit, selling millions of copies. It also inspired many other simulation video games. He earned enough money from this job to pay for his university studies.
Studying at Cambridge University
After his time at Bullfrog, Hassabis went to Queens' College, Cambridge. He studied Computer Science and graduated in 1997 with top honors.
Career and Groundbreaking Research
After university, Hassabis continued his journey in the world of technology and science.
Working at Lionhead Studios
He joined Lionhead Studios, a company started by Peter Molyneux, who he had worked with before. At Lionhead, Hassabis was the lead AI programmer for the game Black & White, released in 2001. This game was known for its advanced artificial intelligence.
Founding Elixir Studios
In 1998, Hassabis started his own game company in London called Elixir Studios. He managed the company and was the main designer for games like Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius.
Republic: The Revolution was a very ambitious game. It tried to simulate how an entire fictional country worked using AI. While it was a big idea, the game faced delays and mixed reviews. Evil Genius, a fun game about being a Bond villain, did much better. In 2005, the studio closed, and its game rights were sold.
Learning from the Human Brain
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After Elixir Studios, Hassabis went back to school. He earned his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London (UCL) in 2009. He wanted to learn how the human brain works. His goal was to find new ideas for making better AI programs.
He studied how our brains imagine things, remember, and how amnesia affects us. His research showed that people with damage to a part of their brain called the hippocampus (which causes memory loss) also struggled to imagine new experiences. This finding connected how we remember things with how we imagine them. This work was even listed as one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year by Science magazine in 2007.
Creating DeepMind
Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind. This company focuses on machine learning AI. He started it in London in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. Their big goal is to "solve intelligence" and then use that intelligence to "solve everything else."
DeepMind works on creating smart computer programs that can learn on their own. They want to build a general-purpose AI that can do many different tasks, like a human brain.
One of their early successes was training an AI program called Deep Q-Network (DQN). This program learned to play classic Atari video games better than humans, just by looking at the screen!
In 2014, Google bought DeepMind. Since then, DeepMind has achieved many amazing things:
- AlphaGo: They created AlphaGo, an AI that beat the world champion Lee Sedol at the complex game of Go. Go was thought to be too difficult for computers to master.
- Data Center Efficiency: DeepMind's AI helped Google reduce the energy used to cool its data centers by 40%.
- Healthcare: They partnered with the UK's National Health Service (NHS) to improve medical services. For example, their AI helps identify early signs of eye diseases.
DeepMind has also made big steps in areas like deep learning and reinforcement learning. Hassabis believes AI will be one of the most helpful technologies ever. However, he also warns about the risks if AI is not used carefully. He supports more research into making AI safe and controllable.
AlphaFold: Understanding Proteins
In 2016, DeepMind used its AI to tackle a major challenge in science: protein folding. Proteins are vital for life, and their shape helps them do their job. Predicting a protein's 3D shape from its basic building blocks is very hard. Knowing a protein's shape can help in finding new medicines and understanding diseases.
In 2018, DeepMind's tool called AlphaFold won a major competition by predicting protein structures very accurately. Hassabis called it a "lighthouse project" because it was their first big effort to solve a real-world scientific problem.
In 2020, a new version, AlphaFold 2, achieved even better results. It was so accurate that scientists said the problem of protein folding was "essentially solved." The errors were smaller than the width of an atom! After this, DeepMind used AlphaFold2 to predict the shapes of all 200 million known proteins. They made this information freely available online for anyone to use. This was a huge step forward for biology and medicine.
Personal Life and Interests
Demis Hassabis is married to a molecular biologist, and they have two sons. They live in North London. He is also a big fan of the Liverpool FC football team. A documentary called The Thinking Game about him premiered in 2024.
Awards and Recognitions
Demis Hassabis has received many awards for his work in science and technology.
Major Awards
- 2024 – Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- 2024 – Knight Bachelor for "services to artificial intelligence"
- 2023 – Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
- 2023 – Canada Gairdner International Award
- 2023 – Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (for AlphaFold)
- 2022 – BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
- 2022 – Princess of Asturias Award (with other AI pioneers)
- 2020 – Dan David Prize
- 2018 – Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
- 2017 – Appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
- 2017 – Named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People
Research Highlights
His research has been recognized by Science Magazine as a Top 10 Scientific Breakthrough of the Year multiple times:
- 2021 – For AlphaFold v2
- 2020 – For AlphaFold v1
- 2016 – For AlphaGo
- 2007 – For his neuroscience research on imagination
DeepMind's Achievements
- Seven Nature front cover articles and one Science front cover article.
- Honorary 9-dan Go rank for AlphaGo from Go associations in Korea, China, and Japan.
Gaming Achievements
Hassabis is also an expert player of many games. He has won the all-round world board games championship (the Pentamind) five times! He is also skilled in:
- Chess: Achieved Master standard at age 13.
- Diplomacy: World Team Champion in 2004.
- Poker: Cashed in the World Series of Poker six times.
See also
In Spanish: Demis Hassabis para niños
