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Demis Hassabis

Mark Coles profiles the chess prodigy and video game designer behind a scientific breakthrough that could change medicine.

The British artificial intelligence lab DeepMind have made an astonishing breakthrough in one of biology鈥檚 toughest problems. The firm announced this week that it had largely cracked the problem of predicting how proteins folds into unique shapes, a challenge scientists have been working on for 50 years. The discovery is expected to accelerate research into illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer鈥檚, and could even help find solutions to climate change. Behind the project is DeepMind鈥檚 co-founder, Demis Hassabis. A former chess prodigy, Hassabis has always been captivated by games and the mental agility needed to play them. This fascination with the human mind inspired his determination to use artificial intelligence to solve the world鈥檚 problems.

Producers: Ben Crighton, Viv Jones
Editor: Rosamund Jones

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13 minutes

Last on

Sun 6 Dec 2020 05:45

Broadcasts

  • Sat 5 Dec 2020 19:00
  • Sun 6 Dec 2020 05:45

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