In the 1990s, a young student at Queens’ College was studying computer science and thinking about games, minds and machines. Years later he returned to Cambridge to talk about artificial intelligence, and about how his student years had shaped him.
Demis Hassabis studied Computer Science at Queens’. In a later Cambridge talk he returned to the Babbage Lecture Theatre and reflected on the influence of that time. It is a modern example of how a place of study can stay part of someone’s story long after they leave.
One of DeepMind’s co-founders
Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, and his career links computer games, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. The Royal Society records that he completed his doctorate in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, so this is a Cambridge alumni connection within a career that spans many places.
A Cambridge education can be a beginning: a connection carried into ideas developed far beyond it.
Looking towards biology
Cambridge’s account of his return discusses AI and the prediction of protein structures, and his hopes for its use in drug discovery. These are research ambitions rather than guarantees. Alongside Turing’s story, they continue a long Cambridge conversation about computation and intelligence.
Sources & further reading
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