The column traces Demis Hassabis’s career path from neuroscientist to Google DeepMind chief, highlighting his work on AlphaGo and AlphaFold that contributed to his 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It discusses Hassabis’s prediction that artificial general intelligence could arrive within years and his proposal for government regulatory oversight of frontier AI systems. Author Kim Dae-shik argues that the competitive race among tech leaders toward AGI creates a troubling dynamic in which the most ethical person must win the race, questioning whether superintelligent systems could be controlled or kept aligned with human values.
