New Delhi: During the recent SXSW London event, Demis Hassabis, Nobel laureate and CEO of Google DeepMind, created headlines with his frank remarks about email overflow. Hassabis disclosed that he would pay thousands of dollars monthly just to get freedom from the constant barrage of emails, putting the spotlight on a problem that troubles millions of people around the world. He explained how the endless stream of messages, notifications, and repetitive requests not only wastes time but also leads to a loss of important communication.
To get rid of this challenge, Hassabis and his DeepMind team are developing a disruptive artificial intelligence system. This AI is designed to read, understand, and respond to routine emails in a user’s unique writing style, effectively serving as a digital personal assistant. The goal is to automate tedious communication tasks, allowing users to focus on more meaningful work and personal interactions. Hassabis highlights that this technology will also shield users from the attention-seeking algorithms installed by major tech companies, helping people take control over their digital lives.
Demis Hassabis is not new to solving complex problems. He is known for leading the development of AlphaFold, an AI system which cracked the 50-year-old challenge of predicting protein structures—a scientific breakthrough that helped him win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Since co-founding DeepMind in 2010, which was later acquired by Google in 2014, Hassabis has kept pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence. Today, he leads Google’s efforts toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), with a vision to use AI not just for scientific discovery but also to improve everyday life.
(Written/Edited by: Aman Choudhary)