I've been keeping an eye on the various documents released as part of the ongoing Musk vs Altman legal fight, which centres around OpenAI changing to a for-profit structure and Elon Musk's belief he was deceived by Sam Altman. The documents, which consist mainly of emails and text exchanges between the various figures involved, turn out to have several themes running through them: and an absolutely huge one is the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis.
Hassabis is widely regarded as the outstanding talent in the AI field, a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 2024 shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John M. Jumper for their work on AI protein structure prediction. He also began his career in videogames at Bullfrog, before working as lead AI programmer on Lionhead's Black & White, and founding his own developer, Elixir Studios (which made Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius).
But we're talking about Hassabis today because Elon Musk and his various AI buddies have a real obsession with the dude, which at times seems to veer into the unethical. The question really is whether it's Hassabis' trustworthiness that bothers them, or the fact that they don't want ...


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