Google DeepMind CEO Worries About a “Worst-Case” A.I Future, But Is Staying Optimistic

Demis Hassabis learned he had won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry just 20 minutes before the world did. The CEO of Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s artificial intelligence lab, received a phone call with the good news at the last minute, after a failed attempt by the Nobel Foundation to find his contact information in advance. “I would have got a heart attack,” Hassabis quips, had he learned about the prize from the television. Receiving the honor was a “lifelong dream,” he says, one that “still hasn’t sunk in” when we meet five months later. Hassabis received half of the award alongside a colleague, John Jumper, for the design of AlphaFold: an AI tool that can predict the 3D structure of proteins using only their amino acid sequences—something Hassabis describes as a “50-year grand challenge” in the field of biology. Released freely by Google DeepMind for the world to use five years ago, AlphaFold has revolutionized the work of scientists toiling on research as varied as malaria vaccines, human longevity, and cures for cancer, allowing them to model protein structures in hours rather than years. The Nobel Prizes in 2024 were the first in history to recognize the contributions of AI to the field of science. If Hassabis gets his way, they won’t be the last. Read more about Demis Hassabis : https://ti.me/4isE8bE Subscribe to TIME’s YouTube channel ►► http://ti.me/subscribe-time Subscribe to TIME: https://ti.me/3GzTYUA Get the day’s top headlines to your inbox, curated by TIME editors: http://ti.me/the-brief Follow us: Twitter: https://ti.me/4jIOcOL Facebook: https://ti.me/43ZNB6U Instagram: https://ti.me/4iueG5E