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The Audio Long Read

‘There’s this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?’: the philosopher inside Google DeepMind AI

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.22.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate – and think through – the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference? By Robert P Baird. Read by Simon Darwen. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is The Guardian.

0:08.8

Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

0:16.8

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

0:24.6

There's this deep mystery of what actually is this thing.

0:29.5

The Philosopher Inside Google Deep Mind AI by Robert P. Bed, read by Simon Darwin.

0:44.2

Thank you. Robert P. Baird. Read by Simon Darwin. In 2017, a 33-year-old political philosopher named Yasin Gabriel was told by a friend

0:51.2

that he ought to apply for a job at DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Google,

0:56.2

where much of its AI research was concentrated. The suggestion was not an obvious one.

1:07.5

Gabriel was a cheerful but intense junior academic with a passion for Vepasana meditation,

1:13.6

and what his brother calls enthusiastic rock climbing.

1:17.6

The eldest son of a Greek management professor and a British documentary maker,

1:22.6

Gabriel split his time between teaching and international development work.

1:26.6

At the University of Oxford,

1:29.1

where he was a fellow at St John's College, Gabriel taught courses on political theory and wrote

1:34.3

papers on the moral contortions of yuppie ethics and the ethical blind spots of effective altruism.

1:42.5

When he wasn't there, he did crisis work for the United Nations Development

1:45.8

Programme in Sudan and Lebanon. DeepMind, meanwhile, was the world's leading AI research lab.

1:54.0

In part, this was because it had the financial and computational backing of Google,

1:58.9

which had bought the company in 2014 for $650 million. In part, it was

2:05.2

because DeepMind had recently shown it could put those resources to stunning use. In Seoul, in 2016,

2:12.5

a deep mine system called AlphaGo defeated Lee Siddol, a South Korean go champion in a five-game match.

2:21.0

The victory was significant, not least because of Goh's legendary complexity. The game has more

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