How Google DeepMind Accidentally Started the AI Race - The Story
TechStuff
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
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Summary
What drives a man to turn down half a million pounds at 18, test Mark Zuckerberg's sincerity over dinner, and wonder aloud if he can win a second Nobel Prize? For Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, the answer is a lifelong pursuit of artificial general intelligence — and an unshakeable belief that the technology he's creating will change everything about what it means to be human. Oz speaks with journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby about his new book, The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence, tracing Demis's extraordinary journey from chess prodigy to the man at the center of the most consequential technological race of our time.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:19.8 | Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Osvaloshan. and today we get the opportunity to go behind the curtain at Google's Deep Mind. |
| 0:27.6 | For almost three years in the upstairs room of a pub in North London, journalist Sebastian Malaby met regularly with the company's CEO and co-founder, Demis Hazabas. |
| 0:38.5 | They spoke about artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, motivation, and consequence. |
| 0:44.9 | All against a backdrop of an increasingly intense three-way race between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, |
| 0:51.9 | to win the race towards AGI. |
| 0:54.5 | Sebastian, congratulations on your new book, The Infinity Machine, and welcome to Tech Stuff. |
| 0:59.3 | Thank you. It was great to be here. |
| 1:01.0 | You begin the book with a quote from one of the scientists who worked on Manhattan Project, |
| 1:05.8 | who said, what we are creating now is a monster whose influence is going to change history, |
| 1:11.1 | yet it would be impossible not to see it through. |
| 1:13.8 | The energy source which is now being made available will make scientists |
| 1:17.5 | the most hated and the most wanted citizens of any country. |
| 1:22.2 | We're reliving that now with AI, aren't we? |
| 1:24.3 | I mean, I began this project wanting to capture the tingling sensation |
| 1:29.0 | of human beings like Demisisiziziz, creating the new version of atomic weapons, right? This incredibly |
| 1:36.1 | powerful AI technology that has enormous upsides, but could also be very, very dangerous. And the |
| 1:41.7 | surprise was, I didn't have to bring it up to them. They brought it up |
| 1:44.6 | to me. I mean, it's so much on their minds. And so that's why I put this quotation about the Manhattan |
| 1:49.7 | project at the start of the book, because it's kind of the, it sums up one of the main threads, |
| 1:54.7 | which is this, you know, scientists can't resist inventing something which is exciting technically, and then they're |
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