Amazing talking between Demis Hassabis (DeepMind) and Lex Fridman- Thoughts and Believe

6 min readSep 8, 2022

Note: The words below might not 100% correct, for a fully understanding of this conversation, please refer to the original link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfr50f6ZBvo

Great thoughts from Demis

21:27 When DeepBlue beat Kasparav

Deep blue was a huge moment, beating Kasparov off, but actually, when that happened…

But I remember coming away from that, being more impressed by Kasparov’ mind than I was by deep blue, because here was Kasparov with his human mind,

Not only could he play chess more or less same level as this brute of a calculation machine, but of course Kasparov can do everything else humans can do, ride a bike, talk many languages, do politics, all the rest… with same brain, yet deep blue brilliant as it was at chess, it had been hand coded for chess … but it couldn’t do anything else

1:11

I do think there is this other type of creativity of true spark of new knowledge, new idea never thought before about … just a unique way of putting those things together I think some of the greatest sceientists in history have displayed

1:21:22

As true scientist what you find is, the more you find out, the more you realize we don’t know

1:21

That it’s surprising that more people aren’t troubled, you know

Every night I think about all these things we interact with all the tie that we have no idea how they work, time, consciousness, gravity, life, we can’t, these are all the fundamental things of nature, we don’t know really how what they are

(Demis, I think same issues also, most of time, in the day time though)

1:24

I think of it a little bit like the tree of all knowledge, if you image that’s all the knowledge there is in the universe to attain, and we sort of barely scratched the surface of that so far…

I want to explore as much of that tree of knowledge as it’s possible to do and I think that involves AI helping us with understanding or finding patterns, also potentially designing and building new tools experimental tools

(Patterns, what an exciting word! That’s how natural opens window and shows us the rules)

1:25

[Lex] Something tells me that knowledge for tree of knowledge for humans is much smaller in the set of all possible trees of knowledge is actually quite small, giving our cognitive limitations, limited cognitive capabilities that even with the tools we build, we still won’t able to understand a lot of things and that’s perhaps what non-human system might be able to reach further, not just as tools, but in themselves understanding something that they can bring back.

(Sharp words, Lex!)

1:26

Tools could go beyond that, they would not have that limitation necessary, they could think 11 dimensions 12 dimensions whatever is needed.

1:27:13

If you’re reasonably good at chess, You can’t come up what the move Gary comes up with in his move, But he can explain it to you, and you can understand.

1:27:31

Maybe you couldn’t have invented that thing but you can understand and appreciate that.

Same like you can appreciate Vivaldi or Mozart or something , appreciate the beauty of that without being able to construct it yourself, invent the music yourself.

(I am a big fan of Mozart and Vivaldi also, life is more beautiful because of their music)

1:27:48

One sign of intelligence is the ability to explain things clearly and simply.

Richard Feynman, another one of my all-time heroes use to say that, right, If you can explain it something simply that’s the best sign, a complex topic simply, that’s the best signs of you understanding it.

1:38:54

Because the amount of energy our brain use I think it’s like 20% of the body’s energy… because brain’s using so mucg energy

1:38:30 A general purpose brain rather than a special purpose one, because that amount of of energy our brains use, like 20% of the body’s

1:39

Which is why I think it’s only been done once from this sort of specialized brains that you see in animals, to this sort of general purpose truly powerful brains that humans have,

and I think we’ve seen the same with AI systems… It’s always easier to craft a specific solution to a problem, like chess, than it has been to build a general learning system that could potentially do many things, because initially,

that system (general purpose) will be way worse than less efficient than specialized system.

2:02 :02

I still like pencil and paper best for working out things… I still often print them out actually I still prefer to mark out things, and I find it goes into the brain quicker, better and sticks in the brain better, when you’re still using physical pen and pencil and paper

( Alan Turing: A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.)

2:06:05

The life I’m living is to gain and understand the knowledge.

What is really going on here? … I feel like we’re in some huge puzzle/

The universe seems to be structured in a way, you know, why is it structured in a way that science is even possible … it feels like it’s almost structured in a way to be conducive to gaining knowledge

2:08:23

What is the true nature of reality? … that’s the question I would ask

Believe and Courage

52:39

They used to think I was mad thinking about that some new advance could be done with learning system, and I was actually pleased to hear that because at least you know you’re on a unique track at that point. Even if all of you know professors are telling you, you’re mad.

as difficult to get two cents together. Back to 2010, it was very difficult

/52:57

56:39

And I got to the point where we wouldn’t mention it to any of our professors because they would just eye roll and think we, you know, committed career suicide.

56:47

Back in 2010, Our mission statement, and still is today, it was used to be: Solving step one solve intelligence, step two using it to solve everything else. You can imagine pitching that to a vc in 2010, you know that kind of looks we got( a big smile from Demis!)