At first look, Demis Hassabis is an uncommon determine for Dominic Cummings to have turned to for steering in March 2020 about the specter of the novel coronavirus bearing down on the UK.
The co-founder of Google subsidiary DeepMind, which is devoted to high-level AI analysis, has a diversified CV, however is not any epidemiologist. A baby chess prodigy, he hit the rank of grasp at 13 and was for a short time the second-highest-rated participant on the earth in his age class.
After finishing his A-levels two years early, he joined online game studio Bullfrog, the place he co-designed the hit traditional Theme Park at simply 17 years outdated, earlier than leaving to review pc science at Cambridge. He returned to online game improvement for an additional decade, and, after switching again to academia and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, based DeepMind in 2011.
Within the decade since, throughout which DeepMind was bought to Google for £400m, the corporate has labored on a lot of healthcare issues. One arm, DeepMind Well being, controversially partnered with the NHS to attempt to construct apps to assist docs monitor kidney infections.
One other department of the corporate, the one Hassabis was extra immediately concerned in, centered on theoretical breakthroughs first, with purposes coming later: the corporate succeeded in constructing AIs with world-beating efficiency at video games together with Go, chess and the online game Starcraft II. Final 12 months, these breakthroughs have been additionally utilized to tackling well being issues, as DeepMind introduced a shocking breakthrough “within the tough downside of protein folding”.
However, DeepMind says, Hassabis wasn’t invited to speak about his work. “Demis was one in every of a number of scientists who contributed his ideas on the federal government’s response to Covid-19,” a DeepMind spokesperson instructed the Guardian. “He attended one Sage assembly in-person on 18 March. The views he shared with fellow Sage members, officers, and authorities advisers, together with Dominic Cummings, have been primarily based purely on reviewing publicly accessible worldwide knowledge.
“Together with many different scientists on the time, Demis was a proponent of quick and decisive lockdown measures primarily based on public proof drawn from what was occurring in different international locations. He was performing in a private capability as a number one knowledge scientist within the public curiosity.”
Cummings has a well-documented fascination with the world of science. In the identical early phases of the UK’s response, Timothy Gowers, a Fields-medal-winning mathematician, was known as on to arrange the Knowledge Analysis and Studying for Viral Epidemics, or Delve, group, which reported in favour of face masks use in Might 2020. However, in addition to being a usually revered scientist, Hassabis is linked to the rationalist motion, which has guided a lot of Cummings’ considering.
“We all know that Dom is rationalist-influenced from his personal blogroll and feedback,” says Tom Chivers, creator of a e book on the motion, The AI Does Not Hate You. Whereas Hassabis will not be himself a member of the neighborhood, his involvement in superior AI analysis brings him into the identical circles.
“What rationalism implies from a coverage perspective is a giant query,” Chivers says, “however you possibly can see one thing prefer it within the efficient altruist mode of considering: attempting to separate emotional responses from outcomes. And, by extension, it may possibly result in severe considered long-term existential dangers, AI and bio-terror, as a result of they’ve the potential to crush human flourishing in the long run.”
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