Demis Hassabis is a Nobel Prize winner and CEO of Google DeepMind. He is one of the most important people alive on what is quickly becoming the biggest technological advance of our lifetime. Because the biggest way AI is going to impact your life, you can’t see.

It’s not a chatbot or an image generator. It’s the tools he and his team are building that are invisible to you – in new drug design, nuclear fusion, natural disasters detection, quantum computers.

So who Demis is and what he chooses to build matters a lot. And he’s fascinating…

He’s a childhood chess prodigy who at 17 turned down a reportedly million dollar job offer from a gaming company to go to college instead, and then get a PhD in neuroscience. He founded his company DeepMind with a mission to “solve intelligence” – starting with beating video games. He sold that company to Google specifically because they promised to let DeepMind focus on scientific research.

But as this has turned into the most intense technological battle in recent history, Demis is now in charge of much much more. He’s now behind basically everything Google does in AI.

He’s making decisions that affect your life and millions of other lives every single day.

So what is he planning to do with all that power?

My goal is to show you the future Demis Hassabis wants to build, so you can decide for yourself what you think of it.

Welcome to HUGE* Conversations.

This interview was recorded on March 5, 2026 in London.

Chapters
00:00 The AI most likely to save your life
02:04 Who is the man behind Google’s AI?
03:58 The 50-year mystery AI just solved
06:15 The moment that changed everything
12:30 Why every future drug will use AI
16:47 The cutting edge of drug discovery now
19:13 How DNA-editing and AI work together
21:52 "I would have left AI in the lab longer"
25:39 The "Code Red" that changed google
29:16 Move 37: When AI got creative
34:24 Why true intelligence is so hard
37:22 From zero to world champion in 24 hours
43:09 How militaries should use AI
45:40 AI risks nobody talks about
50:13 What humans can do that AI can’t
55:17 The sci-fi future Demis imagines
58:17 What Demis Hassabis wants his legacy to be
1:00:14 How to get "superpowers" with AI
1:01:56 How to prepare for AI
1:04:59 🙂

You can find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram
On TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram
Or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/cleoabram

Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, HUGE* If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.

Additional reading and watching:
– The Thinking Game (documentary) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95J8yzvjbQ
– AlphaGo – The Movie (documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Yu0026t=3159s
– Veritasium's "AlphaFold – The Most Useful Thing AI Has Ever Done": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_fHJIYENdIu0026list=WLu0026index=5u0026t=74s
– Google DeepMind: The Podcast, "The future of intelligence | Demis Hassabis": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVbypvxDtou0026t=120s
– AlphaGenome Announcement: https://deepmind.google/blog/alphagenome-ai-for-better-understanding-the-genome/
– AlphaFold paper in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2
– Isomorphic Labs: https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/
– Demis' definition of AGI: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/1925464027213468029
– WeatherLab (interactive site): https://deepmind.google.com/science/weatherlab
-Material Science AI (GNoME): https://deepmind.google/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/
– Quantum Computing AI (AlphaQubit): https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/alphaqubit-quantum-error-correction/

Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/

Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro

Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox

Follow along for more episodes of HUGE* If True: https://www.youtube.com/cleoabram?sub_confirmation=1

—
Hey, welcome to the joke down low!

What did the robot say to its leader?
“AI, captain!”

Find a way to use “captain” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description 🙂