{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAjLnT9aL4", "page_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAjLnT9aL4", "title": "Interview with Demis Hassabis", "show_or_channel": "studiogiochi", "date": null, "duration_s": 1530, "type": "interview", "speakers": ["Demis Hassabis"], "confidence": "medium", "notes": "Older games-era interview (Elixir Studios period); date unknown.", "people": ["demis-hassabis"], "id": "0000_studiogiochi-interview-with-demis-hassabis", "audio_duration_s": 1529.63775, "worker": "jc-w17", "transcribe_s": 69.1, "model": "large-v3", "segments": [{"start": 0.98, "end": 30.35, "text": "Yeah, fine. Always playing, thinking about games and things like that. Yeah, yeah. Is that your home office or your work office? Work office, yeah. But we are just a small company, not as big as yours. Yeah. Okay, I will stay here just 15 minutes, something like that. Just a few, a little chat. Yes. Now we are very famous for many things, but..."}, {"start": 30.42, "end": 60.27, "text": "Little things like changing the words, things like that. But first of all, I would like to talk with you about games. Because I met you as a player. I think it was 1997, the very first Mindsports Olympics. You were something around 20, something like that. But pretty soon, it was very clear to me that you have..."}, {"start": 60.27, "end": 89.78, "text": "Something more than the other players. There were a lot of good players, but you were different. Real different. And in fact, you won five times the PentaMine. That is the overall World Games Championship of the Minesports Olympia. And it has always been an extraordinary experience playing with you. It's something different. Would you tell us, please,"}, {"start": 89.78, "end": 117.98, "text": "Which game you like best and why you like these games? Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I love pretty much all games, but I have some favorites and for different reasons. So, you know, I think some of the most... I can list my favorite games. Obviously, chess was my first game, core game. You were a chess kid prodigy, something like that."}, {"start": 117.98, "end": 144.0, "text": "Yeah, that's right. And I think chess is the foundation of all my other game skills because it teaches you all the core things of planning and strategy and so on and discipline. And then, you know, now probably I would say my more favorite games in the middle of my career when you first met me, I think games like Diplomacy, which is, I think, an amazingly designed game."}, {"start": 144.0, "end": 172.61, "text": "The problem is you can't play it with friends because you lose those friends. You also broke families with this kind of game. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of limited because of that. But I think it's actually one of the most fascinating games and one of the most beautifully designed games. The rules are so simple, right? And very unique, I think, in the style of game it is with the secret moves and the alliances and so on."}, {"start": 172.61, "end": 201.39, "text": "Then, of course, more recently, and I've got a lot into poker, and I think poker is a very interesting game, very interesting from the psychology aspect actually. Yeah, absolutely. People often underestimate poker. Yes, and I think it's only interesting actually playing live poker, because when you play online, then you lose most of the psychology aspect, which I think is the most interesting aspect."}, {"start": 201.46, "end": 230.85, "text": "I'm not sure to completely agree with you. Well, maybe there's still psychology, but it's a bit less, right? Because you can't read. Yeah, but there are different patterns of behavior. But the point is, I don't like the program that tracks the player. It's something that I think is unfair. Yeah, we should be doing that. Yeah."}, {"start": 230.85, "end": 257.73, "text": "Then, in invented games, like more modern invented games, I love Entropy, you know, I won the World Championship many times in that. I think you know that's one of my favorite ones because... Yeah, I imagine it. Yeah, and every game is different because obviously how you draw it out is different. And it has some luck in it, but I think it's about the same as like Backgammon, where it's probabilities you're trying to minimize, right?"}, {"start": 257.73, "end": 282.83, "text": "And then finally I would say Go, the game of Go. I would say that's probably the king of all games in terms of the beauty and the aesthetic. Alex Randolph was used to say that Go was not invented because it's so perfect that it already exists."}, {"start": 282.83, "end": 310.05, "text": "Yeah, that's a great phrase from Alex. I totally agree with that. And it's so old, right? I mean, it's 3,000 years old or something. Yeah, something like that. Like it's always existed. Yeah, but maybe you will have a surprise about Go. Maybe we will talk later. Yes, we will. I can't talk about it yet, but in a few months, I think there will be quite a big surprise. So, you know, of course, we're working on AI."}, {"start": 310.05, "end": 339.12, "text": "Go is one of those very hard things for computers to play because it's so aesthetic, right? It's not about brute force calculation like chess. It's actually about patterns and beauty and shapes. And usually those things computers are not good at. So it's a very interesting game. We will go through this later in a few minutes. Which are the achievements? We are talking about games."}, {"start": 339.12, "end": 367.54, "text": "The first couple of Pentamines is my proudest because I played a lot of chess very high level when I was young, but I always felt more of a general games player than like a decathlete rather than a sprinter, right? So I always enjoyed many games rather than one. And the first Pentamines when the Minesports Olympiad was very big."}, {"start": 367.54, "end": 397.52, "text": "You know, big prize money and all the best players came. It was fantastic, right? Yeah, yeah. One day, hopefully, you know, maybe we can get it back to that. But it was, I think it was quite an amazingly strong field and we had all the best game players there and winning that the first two or three times was, you know... Very good, very good memories, this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, but after a few years and after a lot of achievement,"}, {"start": 397.62, "end": 427.6, "text": "You quit as a serious competitor in mind sport. Okay, you came some time, you show up, you take part in a tournament, you grab some medals, but that's all. The serious participation, you quit. Could you explain why? Yeah, so about 10 years ago, I guess that was, and I felt partly more than 10 years ago now, maybe it was about 2003 or 2004. I think..."}, {"start": 427.63, "end": 453.31, "text": "First of all, I'd won the Pentamind five times, so I wasn't much more I could do with the Pentamind. It was several influencing factors together. So I'd won it five times, so I'd achieved what I wanted to achieve. Things changing in my work, so I finished my games company, my kids were born."}, {"start": 453.31, "end": 460.82, "text": "I was doing a PhD. I was moving into my new phase of life with my neuroscience and then my AI."}, {"start": 460.82, "end": 485.38, "text": "It didn't fit quite as much to be able to go away for weekends and play lots of games all night, like I used to do. Maybe I was getting older as well. And also, the other thing was, one of the things I really enjoyed was learning new games. But by that point, I probably know how to play, I don't know, 50, 100 games, I can't remember, some large number. So that means now..."}, {"start": 485.38, "end": 513.58, "text": "I still like learning new games, but there's less joy because mostly I can see a motif in the game from something else that I already know. So there's not whole new kinds of game genres I've never seen before. The exploration, the first part, the excitement. Yes, exactly. Like the first time you ever come across Go or the first time you play poker. I remember the first time we played Ovari. Yes, exactly."}, {"start": 513.58, "end": 542.66, "text": "It was fascinating. We played those champions from Africa, remember? Yeah, I remember. It was fantastic. They were grandmasters. You directly joined them at the World Championship. Yeah, and they were amazing. I was satisfied with the beginner tournament. Yeah, yeah. So it was fun. And, you know, Shogi and then learning all these, you know. So by the time I got to, I guess, my late 20s, I felt..."}, {"start": 542.66, "end": 572.08, "text": "That I had explored a lot of what games really meant. And I still love them, but I've extracted the excitement. The excitement is less. The other thing, maybe the final reason was that it was around that time that the Minesports Olympiad started going downhill in terms of sponsorship. Yeah, I understand. So it wasn't as big an event anymore, right? Let's say, I think you are..."}, {"start": 572.08, "end": 602.05, "text": "The strongest opponent I ever had. And possibly you are one of the strongest players ever. I could think about Stu Ungar. I don't know exactly how the pronunciation of the name is. Yes. There are other players, even in the past, that you like to be compared with. Yeah."}, {"start": 602.05, "end": 630.0, "text": "Which one? Which one? Okay, Stu Unger, it's a completely different life, let's say. Yeah, a very different life. You know, there are some... I love anybody who is the maximum at their chosen thing, right? So, you know, like today, in modern day poker players, I like Phil Ivey, right? And Stu Unger is obviously amazing, and Johnny Chan and Phil Helmuth."}, {"start": 630.0, "end": 659.92, "text": "Those guys. But I quite like the classic chess players and Go players as well. So the famous Go players from, you know, 200 years ago, Shusaku, these guys were called the Invincible. And then, you know, from the chess players, I do really like Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, you know, and Mikhail Tayal. But this player only played one game, as far as I know. What do you think?"}, {"start": 659.92, "end": 688.03, "text": "They achieved and would have been playing all kind of games. Yeah, I actually don't think many of them would have been that good at many games. I've taught quite a few chess players, strong chess players, other games. And it's a different type of skill being a general games player like you are. You know, I think it's more about how fast can you transfer your knowledge. Yeah, precisely. You describe precisely what I like. Yeah, and that's what I love doing. And I think you love it."}, {"start": 688.03, "end": 717.54, "text": "I love it too, and that's what makes us all-round games players. Whereas I think a lot of those chess players, for example, they like only chess and they only see the specifics of chess. And they're really not very good at any of the other games. And I think you see that, it's not true of everyone, but you see that in quite a lot of places. I think one of the most impressive competitors we played against was, there was a couple of very strong ones back in the day when we were playing."}, {"start": 717.54, "end": 746.16, "text": "I always thought Larry Kaufman is very impressive because he was a master at four games, right? Go, shogi, chess, and Chinese chess. So all chess, but still not fully all around, right? But still quite impressive because he was a master. The most important, all information games. Yes, that's true. So it's not fully general, right? But I think that it's hard to know who in the past."}, {"start": 746.16, "end": 775.14, "text": "Would have been good because you don't really know until the Mind Sports. That's why the Mind Sports Olympiad was so great because really for the first time we could see who was good at all these different games. Let's go to the Mind Sports. I think nowadays there is room for an improvement. I think this event deserves to be better recognized in the world. And I always thought that"}, {"start": 775.14, "end": 803.9, "text": "Your collaboration would be the key to this improvement. Do you think there is any possibilities for this to happen? Do you think that Ethan Irfield is a great person, but do you think he will upset you to be involved? Could it be really another story?"}, {"start": 803.9, "end": 833.74, "text": "We both share this passion. Mindsports absolutely deserves to be really big. And I think also it would be great for children to be encouraged to be general games players. Because in some ways, my view is, and this is what I'm teaching my children, it's actually more important to be a general games player because then what you're doing is you're training life skills that you can use in other areas, business, sales. Whereas if you go very narrow,"}, {"start": 833.74, "end": 856.8, "text": "To try and become like Magnus Carlsen at chess, I think then your learning skills are only very specific to chess after a certain level. And so I think, so I would love this to happen. The problem is, is Itan, you know, he's done a great job keeping it going when there was no other support for the sports. I think it would have gone if he hadn't been around."}, {"start": 856.8, "end": 886.58, "text": "Now, maybe the problem is that he likes to run things very closely and tightly. Too much control. And I think if you want something to be very big, you have to share control with people. Absolutely. And other views. I hope this will happen. Yeah, so do I. And I've chatted to him about it and I offered to help and be involved. But so far, I think he's quite resistant to the idea of anyone else."}, {"start": 886.58, "end": 915.55, "text": "You know, being heavily involved. And this is a shame because I think he's great. And I think if he was more open, then I think his objective would be achieved easier as well. Because I think he wants it to work. Absolutely. Nobody wants to steal nothing from him. Yeah. And, you know, I think we need a players association. I think we need to take our cues from all the successful organizations that have been before. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. Yeah, absolutely. We know how to do this, right? So..."}, {"start": 915.55, "end": 945.46, "text": "I just hope that that can happen. Otherwise, if not, maybe in the long run, some new organization has to be set up with a new competition, potentially. Because we have to see how it goes next year or two. But it's not growing. It's still nowhere back to even how it was, let alone be bigger than... It should be many thousands of people, like in Essen, right? Yeah, I've just been in Essen. It was fantastic."}, {"start": 945.97, "end": 975.02, "text": "How many people were there this year? 162. It was amazing. Everybody crazy for playing. What do you think about having something like this kind of Olympics competition at Essen? Maybe it should be at Essen. But Essen is more for companies that show their games to the gamers."}, {"start": 975.02, "end": 996.11, "text": "Yes, there are competitions, but it's not based on competition. There was a very big Catan match with 1,040 players together in one room. It was fantastic. All in one room."}, {"start": 996.75, "end": 1024.06, "text": "Now maybe I should go next year because my kids love... Settling the Catan actually is also a genius game. Yeah, absolutely. It changed the scene of games. Yeah, because everyone was playing Monopoly and things like that before at home, right? And then they made this game. The genius of it was that it's so simple and yet you can reconfigure the boards. Every game is different. And also this German idea, I think, of..."}, {"start": 1024.06, "end": 1051.87, "text": "Making sure all the players are involved no matter whose turn it is. Yeah, it's fantastic. The last question about games. The new players that are successful in the Olympics, which one do you see as the better, the one for the future? Andres Kusk, Ankus Karrenval, James Hemphill."}, {"start": 1051.87, "end": 1080.77, "text": "They're all great players, actually, and I really, at least, no, it's not as big, but I think they are actually really quality players that would have been challenging even back in our day. You know, I think Andres Cook, especially, I think he's a very strong games player. I think Hempel is getting stronger, and I think will become very strong. I mean, his weakness is maybe more the classical games, like, you know, the chess-type games. Andres, I think, is a really good all-round player."}, {"start": 1080.77, "end": 1103.66, "text": "So I think it's great that they're kind of carrying the torch forwards. You know, I think they're all worthy champions. Okay. Okay. Now let's go quickly in what you are famous for. You sold DeepMind and you start, that was your startup, AI startup."}, {"start": 1104.24, "end": 1130.99, "text": "I think it was a record amount of money and now you are leading research in Google for AI, if I'm not wrong. Can you briefly explain us in a couple of minutes what you do? Yeah, so I now run a division at Google."}, {"start": 1130.99, "end": 1159.46, "text": "After the sale of the company, really my company is still, DeepMind is still very separate. So we run it as like a autonomous unit within Google. And what we do is we work on artificial intelligence, AI, like you were saying, but a very specific type of AI. AI is about making machines smart. And there's two ways of doing that. One is that you can program, you can think of the solution and program that solution into the computer."}, {"start": 1159.46, "end": 1185.74, "text": "And then the computer kind of dumbly executes the solution. But instead of that, what we do is we give the computer the ability to learn for itself. So then it can learn by experience. So if it's playing a game, it learns by playing the game and then it gets progressively better and it learns how to win the game and learns the structure of the game. So it's kind of like automated learning rather than being given the solution."}, {"start": 1185.74, "end": 1214.34, "text": "So it's a kind of new type of AI, if you like, and it's getting, you know, and we and other people, other groups around the world in academia and other companies are making some quite big breakthroughs now in this type of learning algorithms. And you will have big news in a few months, you say. You are kind of successful in what you are doing. Yes, we're doing good. I mean, we've had some big new, you know, we had a Nature paper."}, {"start": 1214.34, "end": 1242.21, "text": "In February this year, that showed our system playing old Atari games from the 80s, like Space Invaders and these kind of games. I saw the video through Scientific American, it was amazing how they played. Yeah, and it just learns for itself how to play just from the pixels on the screen. You don't tell it anything else. You just tell it, maximize score, here's the pixels, and it figures everything out for itself."}, {"start": 1242.21, "end": 1272.14, "text": "So it's quite amazing when you see it. And yeah, as you say, things are going well and now we're applying that to other domains and in a few months' time I think we'll have some other big announcements. Okay, I'm waiting for that. Yeah, because it should be very, very big not only in AI but also in the games world. Cool. Yeah, because you kind of combine the two things. Yeah, exactly. My two passions. Two passions. Yeah, just..."}, {"start": 1272.14, "end": 1301.39, "text": "Some years ago, you were talking about combining neuroscience and computer science. And I remember that very moment, and I asked you, joking, I was joking, are you going to build the Nexus 6 Android as in Blade Runner? And you didn't realize I was joking. Answered, seriously. I said, yes, kind of that."}, {"start": 1301.39, "end": 1330.48, "text": "And so, how are you in this quest you have? Yeah, we're going good. I mean, you know, we don't work on robots, but, you know, I think it's going to be the most important technology ever because if you solve intelligence and AI, then you can use it to help everything else. So I want to use it to solve science then and help scientific problems and breakthroughs. So we're doing good, you know, it's many..."}, {"start": 1330.48, "end": 1355.95, "text": "It's a real privilege to be able to have the chance to work on this kind of stuff with all the brilliant people here."}, {"start": 1355.95, "end": 1385.02, "text": "So, you know, it's been some of my best moments in our life have been our, you know, the mind sports battles and it was so fun when we were, you know, in the late 90s, 2000s. Yeah, yeah, we had some battles. Yeah, remember when we were playing two games at once, you know, I was some crazy time playing two games at once. Yeah, I remember. I was disqualified because I played poker in another game. Exactly. It was really fun, really, really, really fun."}, {"start": 1385.02, "end": 1414.62, "text": "The last provocation, real provocation. So when you sold your company, I think a lot of money circulated around you. But you don't seem in any way affected by this money. You do not act as a Hollywood celebrity or something like that. So money doesn't seem to be your goal. Am I right?"}, {"start": 1414.62, "end": 1439.79, "text": "Yes, of course. Money never was my goal. So that makes you not only brilliant, but really a great person. Thank you, Dario. I much appreciate that. Just a few words about your relationship with all this money that circulated around you. Yeah, well, look, you know, people asked me that before and I actually made some..."}, {"start": 1439.79, "end": 1469.41, "text": "Quite a lot of money, not as much as this company with my games company when I first saw for my age, right? But that didn't change. I don't think that changed me either. And I'm glad to, you know, you've known me for many years. I'm glad to hear you don't think I have either. And the reason is, is I'm not interested in money ever and power these things. I want to do is achievements, right? And leave a do brilliant things and achieve, you know, big things. And that's what motivates me. And the only good thing about money is that it means."}, {"start": 1469.41, "end": 1496.1, "text": "You're freer to do things that you want to do. And support the things you want to do. So I've given lots of money to my old university. I supported a little bit Mindsports. I'd like to do more, but we need to sort out the structure if we're going to do that. So I think that's what money is for. It's for helping people you love and causes you believe in. And gives you personal freedom to..."}, {"start": 1496.1, "end": 1523.31, "text": "I can really concentrate on what I think matters in life, like my science and family and other things without worrying. So I think that's what money should be for, not for material things, right? Yeah, and that's making me very, very proud to be your friend. Thank you very much. Thanks, Dario. Lovely talking to you, yeah? Really good questions and very interesting, you know, always interesting to talk to you. Okay. Let's see you next year in London."}, {"start": 1523.31, "end": 1527.12, "text": "Yeah, I see you soon, Darren. Okay, bye. Ciao, ciao."}]}