Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox scientist Demis Hassabis FREng FRSA (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence researcher, neuroscientist, computer game designer, entrepreneur, and world-class games player.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Early life modifica

Hassabis was born to a Greek Cypriot father and a Chinese Singaporean mother and grew up in North London.[3][8] A child prodigy in chess, Hassabis reached master standard at the age of 13 with an Elo rating of 2300 and captained many of the England junior chess teams.[9]

Hassabis was educated at Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, as well as Christ's College, Finchley,[3] a state-funded comprehensive school in East Finchley, North London. He completed his GCE Advanced Level and Scholarship Level exams early at the age of 16.Peter Mark Roget

Hassabis è nato da padre greco-cipriota e madre cinese singaporiana ed è cresciuto nel nord di Londra. [3] [8]. è stato un bambino prodigio negli scacchi: Hassabis ha raggiunto il livello Peter Mark Rogetddi Maestro Fide all'età di 13 anni con un punteggio Elo di 2300 e ha capitanato molti dei team di scacchi juniores d'Inghilterra. [9]. Hassabis ha studiato alla Queen Elizabeth's School, a Barnet, ed al Christ's College di Finchley, una scuola completa finanziata dallo stato a East Finchley, a nord di Londra. Ha completato i suoi esami GCE Advanced Level e Scholarship Level all'età di 16 anni.Peter Mark Roget

Bullfrog modifica

He began his computer games career at Bullfrog Productions, first level designing on Syndicate and then at 17 co-designing and lead programming on the classic game Theme Park, with the games designer Peter Molyneux. Theme Park, a celebrated simulation game, sold several million copies and won a Golden Joystick Award, and inspired a whole genre of management sim games. Peter Mark Roget

Ha iniziato la sua carriera nel campo dei videogiochi nella Bullfrog Productions, sviluppatore del primo livello di progettazione di " Syndicate" e in seguito all'età di 17 anni come co-progettista e gestoree della programmazione del gioco classico "[ [Theme Park (videogioco) | Theme Park]]" , con il progettista di giochi Peter Molyneux. Theme Park, un famoso gioco di simulazione, ha venduto diversi milioni di copie e ha vinto un Golden Joystick Award e ha ispirato un intero genere di giochi manageriali di simulazione .

University of Cambridge modifica

Hassabis then left Bullfrog to take up his place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied the Computer Science Tripos graduating in 1997 with a Double First[9] from the University of Cambridge.

Hassabis lasciò la Bullfrog per entrare al Queens' College, Cambridge, dove studiò Computer Science Tripos laureandosi nel 1997 con un Double First dal.

Later life modifica

Lionhead modifica

Subsequent to his graduation from Cambridge, Hassabis worked at Lionhead Studios. Renowned games designer Peter Molyneux, with whom Hassabis had worked at Bullfrog Productions, had recently founded the company. At Lionhead, Hassabis worked as lead AI programmer on the iconic god game Black & White.[9]

Elixir Studios modifica

Hassabis left Lionhead in 1998 to found Elixir Studios, a London-based independent games developer, signing publishing deals with Eidos Interactive, Vivendi Universal and Microsoft.[10] In addition to managing the company, which he grew to 60 people, Hassabis served as executive designer of the BAFTA-nominated games Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius.[9]

The release of Elixir's first game, Republic: The Revolution, a highly ambitious and unusual political simulation game,[11] was delayed due to its huge scope. The final game was reduced from its original vision and greeted with lukewarm reviews, receiving a Metacritic score of 62/100.[12] Evil Genius, a tongue-in-cheek Bond villain simulator, fared much better with a score of 75/100.[13] In April 2005 the intellectual property and technology rights were sold to various publishers and the studio was closed.[14][15]

Neuroscience modifica

Following Elixir Studios, Hassabis returned to academia to obtain his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London (UCL) in 2009 supervised by Eleanor Maguire.[16] He sought to find inspiration in the human brain for new AI algorithms.[17]

He continued his neuroscience and artificial intelligence research as a visiting scientist jointly at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University,[3] before earning a Henry Wellcome postdoctoral research fellowship to the Gatsby Charitable Foundation Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL in 2009.[18]

Working in the field of autobiographical memory and amnesia, he co-authored several influential papers[19] published in Nature, Science, Neuron and PNAS. His most highly cited paper to date,[20] published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, showed systematically for the first time that patients with damage to their hippocampus, known to cause amnesia, were also unable to imagine themselves in new experiences. The finding established a link between the constructive process of imagination and the reconstructive process of episodic memory recall. Based on this work and a follow-up fMRI study,[21] Hassabis developed a new theoretical account of the episodic memory system identifying scene construction, the generation and online maintenance of a complex and coherent scene, as a key process underlying both memory recall and imagination.[22] This work received widespread coverage in the mainstream media[23] and was listed in the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year in any field by the journal Science.[24]

DeepMind modifica

In 2010, Hassabis co-founded DeepMind,[25][26] a London-based machine learning AI startup, with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. Hassabis and Suleyman had been friends since childhood, and he met Legg when both were postdocs at University College London’s Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit.[27] Hassabis also recruited his university friend and Elixir partner David Silver.[28]

DeepMind's mission is to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else".[29] More concretely, DeepMind aims to meld insights from neuroscience and machine learning with new developments in computing hardware to unlock increasingly powerful general-purpose learning algorithms that will work towards the creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI). The company has focused on training learning algorithms to master games, and in December 2013 it famously announced that it had made a pioneering breakthrough by training an algorithm called a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to play Atari games at a superhuman level by only using the raw pixels on the screen as inputs.[30]

DeepMind's early investors included several high-profile tech entrepreneurs.[31][32] In 2014, Google purchased DeepMind for £400 million, although it has remained an independent entity based in London.[33]

Since the Google acquisition, the company has notched a number of significant achievements, perhaps the most notable being the creation of AlphaGo, a program that defeated world champion Lee Sedol at the complex game of Go. Go had been considered a holy grail of AI, for its high number of possible board positions and resistance to existing programming techniques.[34][35] However, AlphaGo beat European champion Fan Hui 5-0 in October 2015 before winning 4-1 against former world champion Lee Sedol in March 2016.[36][37] Other DeepMind accomplishments include creating a Neural Turing Machine,[38] advancing research on AI safety,[39][40] and the creation of a partnership with the National Health Service of the United Kingdom and Moorfields Eye Hospital to improve medical service and identify the onset of degenerative eye conditions.[41] DeepMind has also been responsible for technical advancements in machine learning, having produced a number of award-winning papers. In particular, the company has made significant advances in deep learning and reinforcement learning, and pioneered the field of deep reinforcement learning which combines these two methods.[42]

Awards and honours modifica

Entrepreneurial and scientific modifica

DeepMind modifica

Games modifica

Hassabis is an expert player of many games including:[10]

  • Chess: achieved Master standard at age 13 with ELO rating of 2300 (at the time the second-highest in the world for his age).
  • Diplomacy: World Team Champion in 2004, 4th in 2006 World Championship, 3rd in 2004 European Championship.
  • Poker: cashed at the World Series of Poker six times including in the Main Event.
  • Shogi: joint 1st in the 1999 British Shogi Championship[senza fonte].
  • multi-games events at the London Mind Sports Olympiad: World Pentamind Champion (a record five times: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003)[64] and World Decamentathlon Champion (twice: 2003, 2004).

References modifica

  1. ^ Template:Google scholar id
  2. ^ (EN) Blumirror/Sandbox5, su IMDb, IMDb.com.
  3. ^ a b c d Jasmine Gardner, Exclusive interview: meet Demis Hassabis, London's megamind who just sold his company to Google for £400m, su standard.co.uk, London Evening Standard, 31 January 2014.
  4. ^ (EN) Blumirror/Sandbox5, su FIDE chess ratings, FIDE.
  5. ^ Demis Hassabis: the secretive computer boffin with the £400 million brain, su telegraph.co.uk, The Daily Telegraph, 28 gennaio 2014.
  6. ^ a b Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search, in Nature, vol. 529, n. 7587, 28 January 2016, pp. 484–489, DOI:10.1038/nature16961. URL consultato il 10 December 2017.Template:Closed access
  7. ^ a b Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning, in Nature, vol. 518, n. 7540, 2015, pp. 529–533, DOI:10.1038/nature14236.
  8. ^ Murad Ahmed, Lunch with the FT: Demis Hassabis, su ft.com, Financial Times, 30 gennaio 2015.
  9. ^ a b c d Samuel Gibbs, Demis Hassabis: 15 facts about the DeepMind Technologies founder, su theguardian.com, The Guardian, 2014.
  10. ^ a b Demis Hassabis Personal Website, 2014.
  11. ^ Alfred Hermida, Game plays politics with your PC, 3 September 2003.
  12. ^ Republic: The Revolution, su metacritic.com.
  13. ^ Evil Genius, su metacritic.com.
  14. ^ Chris Remo, Rebellion Acquires Vivendi Licenses, Considers New Franchise Titles, July 14, 2009.
  15. ^ Elixir Studios.
  16. ^ Template:Cite thesis
  17. ^ Brooks R, Hassabis D, Bray D, Shashua A., Turing centenary: Is the brain a good model for machine intelligence? (PDF), in Nature, vol. 482, n. 7386, 2012, pp. 462–463, DOI:10.1038/482462a.
  18. ^ Sam Shead, The incredible life of DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, the computer whiz who sold his AI lab to Google for £400 million, su uk.businessinsider.com, 21 maggio 2017.
  19. ^ Demis Hassabis - Google Scholar Citations, su scholar.google.co.uk.
  20. ^ Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences (PDF), in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, n. 5, 2007, pp. 1726–31, DOI:10.1073/pnas.0610561104.
  21. ^ Using Imagination to Understand the Neural Basis of Episodic Memory, in Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 27, n. 52, 2007, pp. 14365–14374, DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4549-07.2007.
  22. ^ Deconstructing episodic memory with construction, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 11, n. 7, 2007, pp. 299–306, DOI:10.1016/j.tics.2007.05.001.
  23. ^ Amnesiacs May Be Cut Off From Past and Future Alike, 23 January 2007.
  24. ^ The News Staff, BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR: The Runners-Up, in Science, vol. 318, n. 5858, 2007, pp. 1844a–, DOI:10.1126/science.318.5858.1844a.
  25. ^ Demis HASSABIS, su beta.companieshouse.gov.uk, Companies House.
  26. ^ Google DeepMind, su deepmind.com.
  27. ^ David Rowan, DeepMind: Inside Google's Super Brain, 22 June 2015.
  28. ^ Cade Metz, What the AI Behind AlphaGo Can Teach Us About Being Human, 19 May 2016.
  29. ^ Tom Simonite, How Google Plans to Solve Artificial Intelligence, 31 March 2016.
  30. ^ Tom Simonite, Google's AI Masters Space Invaders But Still Sucks at Pacman, 25 February 2015.
  31. ^ DeepMind Technologies, 26 January 2015.
  32. ^ Liz Gannes, Exclusive: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400m, 26 January 2014.
  33. ^ Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Company DeepMind, 26 January 2015.
  34. ^ (EN) How the Computer Beat the Go Master, in Scientific American, 19 March 2016.
  35. ^ The mind in the machine: Demis Hassabis on artificial intelligence, in Financial Times, 21 April 2017.
  36. ^ Cade Metz, In a Huge Breakthrough, Google’s AI Beats a Top Player at the Game of Go, 27 January 2016.
  37. ^ Sophia Yan, A Google Computer Victorious Over the World's Go Champion, 12 March 2016.
  38. ^ Google's Secretive DeepMind Startup Unveils a Neural Turing Machine, 29 October 2014.
  39. ^ Google Developing Kill Switch for AI, 8 June 2016.
  40. ^ Anthony Cuthbertson, Google's Big Red Button Could Save the World, 8 June 2016.
  41. ^ Alex Hern, Google DeepMind pairs with NHS to use machine learning to fight blindness, 5 July 2016.
  42. ^ David Silver, Deep Reinforcement Learning, 17 June 2016.
  43. ^ the news staff, The Runners-Up, 21 December 2007.
  44. ^ Anon, Artificial Intelligence and the Future with Demis Hassabis, Royal Television Society, 2015.
  45. ^ Tom Rowley, Demis Hassabis, the Secretive Computer Boffin with the 400 Million Dollar Brain, 28 January 2014.
  46. ^ Queens College Philanthropic News.
  47. ^ Acclaimed Neuroscientist and Google DeepMind founder wins Royal Society Mullard Award, 21 November 2014.
  48. ^ Leading the way: Top 20 Londoners in The 1000 power list, 16 October 2014.
  49. ^ Craig Redman, The Wired Smart List 2013, 9 December 2013.
  50. ^ Europe’s Top 50 Tech Entrepreneurs, 19 June 2015.
  51. ^ Honorary Fellows of UCL.
  52. ^ Pippa Crerar, The Progress 1000: Mayor Sadiq Khan leads the Evening Standard's list of London's most influential people, 7 September 2016.
  53. ^ Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal, 2015.
  54. ^ a b Rowland Manthorpe, DeepMind and OpenBionics among the winners at the WIRED Audi Innovation Awards, 9 November 2016.
  55. ^ Anon, Nature’s 10, in Nature, vol. 540, n. 7634, 2016, pp. 507–515, DOI:10.1038/540507a.
  56. ^ Anon, From AI to protein folding: Our Breakthrough runners-up, Science, 2016.
  57. ^ Demis Hassabis, su time.com, Time, 20 April 2017. URL consultato il 20 April 2017.
  58. ^ Asian Awards, su theasianawards.com, 2017. URL consultato l'8 June 2017.
  59. ^ Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, su raeng.org.uk, 2017. URL consultato il 25 September 2017.
  60. ^ Cambridge Computer Laboratory Hall of Fame Awards, 2016.
  61. ^ Jee Heun Kahng, Google artificial intelligence program beats S. Korean Go pro with 4-1 score, 15 March 2016.
  62. ^ Laurel Wentz, Google DeepMind AlphaGo in U.K. Wins Innovation Grand Prix, 22 June 2016.
  63. ^ City AM Awards 2016.
  64. ^ Pentamind, 2015.