Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, predicts that the upcoming AI revolution will dwarf the Industrial Revolution by a factor of ten—and may unfold up to ten times faster

Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, predicts that the upcoming AI revolution will dwarf the Industrial Revolution by a factor of ten—and may unfold up to ten times faster

Demis Hassabis, the 49-year-old, head of Google’s DeepMind, envisions artificial intelligence ushering in an era of “incredible productivity” and “radical abundance,” but he worries about who will ultimately reap the rewards—and wishes that the rollout of these technologies had been more gradual. Although he didn’t fit the archetype of a Nobel laureate—state-educated, youthful, and of Greek-Cypriot and Chinese-Singaporean descent—Hassabis found himself center stage in Stockholm last December, receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for DeepMind’s AlphaFold project. Even amid a crowd of much older, grey-haired academics, he describes the experience as “very surreal,” admitting that he rarely stops to savor his achievements, already pondering “what’s next?”

Hassabis first attracted global attention as a chess prodigy at age four. Today, he stands among the most influential figures in technology: as DeepMind’s chief, he is both shaping and championing one of the most transformative innovations of our age. AlphaFold’s ability to predict protein structures—once thought unsolvable—has opened doors to breakthroughs in medicine and beyond. Yet, with public concern mounting over how AI might reshape society, Hassabis finds himself in the unexpected role of AI ambassador. He reflects that, if given his druthers, he would have kept advanced systems like those underpinning ChatGPT under wraps longer, focusing instead on lab-based achievements—“maybe cured cancer or something like that”—before unleashing them into the wider world. Still, he acknowledges that broader access to cutting-edge AI has undeniable benefits: it democratizes experimentation, helps governments formulate policies, and accelerates societal adaptation to these new tools.

In person, Hassabis blends approachability with the air of a man perpetually on the move—dressed in black, carrying both a smartwatch and a classic analog timepiece. In his London office, chessboards signed by legends such as Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen line the walls, a testament to the strategic thinking that shaped his intellect. Between ages four and thirteen, he represented England in junior chess championships, an experience he credits with instilling skills in managing pressure and forward planning.

Born into an artistic household—his father recently composed a musical, and his sister is a composer—Hassabis diverged from the family norm by diving into computers. He spent his chess winnings on early home machines like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Commodore Amiga, teaching himself to program. By seventeen, he’d coded Theme Park, a hit video game whose AI-driven guests would even vomit if food stalls were poorly placed.

After studying computer science at Cambridge and earning a neuroscience PhD at University College London, he co-founded DeepMind in 2010 alongside postdoctoral neuroscientist Shane Legg and family friend Mustafa Suleyman. Their mission: “solve intelligence, then use it to solve everything else.” A 2014 demonstration of an AI mastering Atari games without prior knowledge caught Silicon Valley’s eye. Investors including Peter Thiel, Facebook, and Elon Musk came knocking—Musk even pivoted from his Mars-colony ambitions after Hassabis warned that an unfriendly AI could follow humanity anywhere. That same year, Google acquired DeepMind for £400 million, recognizing AI as central to its own mission of organizing the world’s information.

Hassabis insisted on keeping DeepMind in London, betting on the untapped talent outside Silicon Valley. That decision paid off: in 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeated a top Go player, and soon after AlphaFold cracked protein folding, mapping over 200 million structures in a public database. Yet the landscape shifted in 2022 with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, whose versatile applications—from writing poetry to strategic planning—took everyone, including Google, by surprise. Hassabis notes that even leading labs underestimated the societal appetite and utility of such models, offering a cautionary lesson in the perils of over-familiarity with one’s own technology.

Today, DeepMind is “Google’s engine room,” integrating AI into search summaries, the Gemini assistant, image generation, translation tools, smart glasses, and retail features. Competitors—Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft—are pouring in talent and cash; Suleyman himself now leads a Microsoft AI division. Still, Hassabis remains focused on the larger prize: artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system matching human intellect. He predicts AGI could emerge within five to ten years, potentially sooner, ushering in a “final phase” of pre-AGI civilization after which nothing will be the same. While some fear an AI-driven apocalypse, Hassabis sees utopia: medical breakthroughs, room-temperature superconductors, nuclear fusion, and revolutionary advances across disciplines.

“Assuming we manage it safely and responsibly,” he says, “we should be in a world of radical abundance, where productivity soars and prosperity spreads—provided we address distribution fairly, which is a political challenge.” He warns, however, that unchecked AI could exacerbate job losses, giving economic power to those who control the technology. “If radical abundance arrives, what comes next?” he asks.

As a father of two teenagers, Hassabis envisions a future even more transformative than the dawn of personal computing. He urges young people to become “ninjas” at using AI tools, while recognizing society will still need philosophers, economists, and artists to explore questions of purpose and meaning.

Despite his lofty ambitions, Hassabis’s personal life remains grounded: seven-day workweeks, family game nights, online chess sessions to “exercise the mind,” a Liverpool FC season ticket holder for a handful of matches each year, and a penchant for poker—he celebrated his Nobel win with a poker night featuring Carlsen and other champions. A “cautious optimist,” he believes human ingenuity and adaptability will steer us through an upheaval bound to rival—and perhaps surpass—the Industrial Revolution in scale and speed. He concedes that the transition may be tumultuous but insists that, on balance, humanity will be better off for having embraced this new age of AI.