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Demis Hasabis has a really interesting and unusual CV for a nobel laureate [1], he started his career in AI game programming (he worked e.g. on Popoulous II, Sy
by ThePhysicist 2y ago
Demis Hasabis has a really interesting and unusual CV for a nobel laureate [1], he started his career in AI game programming (he worked e.g. on Popoulous II, Syndicate, Theme Park for Bullfrog, and later for Lionhead Studios on Black & White) before doing a PhD in neuroscience, becoming an entrepreneur and starting DeepMind. I would say this is a refreshing and highly uncommon pick for a nobel prize, really cool to see that you don't have to be a university professor anymore to do this kind of impactful research.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis
- seydor 2y agodoesn't beat that patent clerk guy
- singularity2001 2y agowhose father was one of the leading local industrialists (installing the first electric lighting for the 1885 Munich Oktoberfest)
- nextworddev 2y agoIt’s fascinating how the affluent backgrounds of many famous scientists and entrepreneurs are downplayed. Eg Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, etc
- xdavidliu 2y agoBill Gates, but (according to the Isaacson book) not Elon Musk
- concordDance 2y agoI'm now curious which of Gates, Musk and Bezos families were wealthier when they started their respective careers... I suspect Bezos, then Gates, then Musk, but it could be any order.
- throw310822 2y agoI would be very happy to be able to multiply my parents'/family's money by whatever factor Bezos, Gates or Musk have multiplied theirs.
- LightBug1 2y agoThe multiplier would be significantly different. Think the Wright Brothers first aeroplane vs a rocket ship.
- daedrdev 2y agoThere were at least hundreds of thousands if not millions who had easier starts them Jeff Besos.
- LightBug1 2y agoThe mental exercise is to compare two identical Jeff Bezos' (identify his attributes), one has the background/funds they did, one doesn't. Of course, that's not possible, so then you do the same with other highly intelligent and skilled tech professionals. I'd argue that without the funding and other resources, those skilled pro's won't get anywhere. But with it, some would do incredibly well. It's not common in a global sense, but we see it every single day. Comparing Bezos to thousands/millions of randomised others is pointless. Then you may say, oh but Amazon is unique. Yes, but then there are other factors at play. Like the luck (skill? funding?) to take advantage of a unique moment in time at the start of the web. That moment isn't available eveI mean, try to start an Amazon today ... etc
- throw310822 2y agoI think the question is not whether Bezos, or Gates, were helped by a reasonably wealthy family. The question is- was that wealth helpful because it allowed them to fully develop their own potential; or they have no merit at all and anybody with that wealth would have done the same? I think those who point out the privileged start of these entrepreneurs are suggesting the second, and yet that makes no sense (millions had the same privilege and didn't get anywhere close).
- DevX101 2y agoIf you gave the $300,000 Bezos got from his father to 10,000 random Americans in 1994, none of them would have created a company the equivalent of Amazon's scale.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stonemetal12 2y agoHow many of those 10k would have the same background? We can pretend Bezos' dad raised him in a "normal" middle class background then randomly dropped 300K on him, or we can acknowledge he is the business equivalent of an Olympic athlete.
- varelse 2y agoBezos? Abandoned by his dad who was literally an alcoholic clown and raised by his mom and her 2nd husband Bezos? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Jorgensen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Jorgensen So $300K in 1994 is about $640K. That's nice but about 80th percentile of net worth. It's nice his parents believed in him. How many of your parents would do that for you? I'm sure at 1 in 5 of them have that kind of money because of the distribution here. So the difference here is He was smart, he got lucky, and your parents don't believe in you enough on this front. But compare and contrast Bezos and Musk. Bezos's mid-life crisis is leaving his wife to run around on his yacht banging models. Musk's mid-life crisis is trying to destroy democracy so he and his mom won't have to pay US taxes. Neither one is a role model, but I don't even get the point of the latter. Which brings us back to AlphaFold. The AlphaFold team did something amazing. But also, they had a backer that believed in them. David Baker, for better or worse, didn't achieve what they did and he'd been at it for decades. It's amazing what good backing can achieve.
- itishappy 2y agoI assumed the parent post was talking about his adopted father. The man who raised and dropped $250k on Bezos was Miguel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Bezos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Bezos
- chongli 2y agoBecause having some degree of runway is almost always necessary but never sufficient. Thousands of Americans receive similar amounts of money from their parents in the form of inheritance of the family home and other major assets. Only one took windfall of that size and created Amazon.
- concordDance 2y agoThe "necessary, but not sufficient" is unintuitive to most people. Billionaires who come from working class families are almost unheard of, but probably more than half the self made (for a definition, something like multiplied familial investments by at least 100x maybe?) billionaires come from upper middle class families. I wonder if they are actually more likely to come from upper middle class (where parents are highly paid professionals) than the proper idle rich or even CEOs and company founders...
- djtango 2y agoYes... Like Taylor Swift To my mind, Joe Rogan is the most recent embodiment of the American dream which is why I think he is so popular
- 77pt77 2y ago> To my mind, Joe Rogan is the most recent embodiment of the American dream Look how that turned out... Maybe the dream is more like a nightmare.
- timmg 2y agoThere’s another side to this: if you accept the idea of “nature” — genes capable of carrying “talent” (in some sense) — it should be common for children of talented people to be talented. Of course, talent doesn’t always mean prosperity. But in a society modeled on meritocracy, it often will.
- km155 2y agohypothesis : it's not per se affluence. it's the culture of the family and social circle. A dollop of $ to have some free time and maybe buy some books would help and might be necessary. imagine a family where youngster is encouraged to work on intellectual problems. where you aren't made fun of for touching nerdy things. or for doing puzzles. where the social circle endorses learning. these things more important than $ in a first world economy. (if third world, yes give me some money please for a book or even just food. and hopefully with time, an internet connected device then the cream will rise they can just watch feynman on YouTube...) that said, it's "better" than it used to be. hundreds of years ago most interesting science, etc. was done by the royal class. not because they are smarter (I assume). But they had free time. And, social encouragement perhaps too. bill gates and zuck dropped out of Harvard right? it's not per se Harvard, at least not the graduating bit? being surrounded by other smart people is helpful -- and or people who encourage intellectual endeavors.
- bonoboTP 2y ago> hundreds of years ago most interesting science, etc. was done by the royal class Not really true. Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Mendel, Faraday, Tesla... Not from royals, nor from high nobility. Many great scientists were born to merchant families, of a level that wasn't even all too rare.
- throwaway2037 2y agoAbout Warren Buffett, I was surprised to see his name here. Wiki tells me that his father, Howard Buffett, was: > four-term Republican United States Representative for the state of Nebraska To me, that doesn't sound super impressive. Also: > After failing to secure a job in the family grocery business, he started a small stock brokerage firm. Ok, that sounds less impressive. Further: > During his first term, when congressional salary was raised from $10,000 Oh wait. That is real money. 10k USD in 1943 is 180k today. Surely upper middle class by any measure.
- BeetleB 2y agoThe patent clerk guy was almost done with his PhD when he became a patent clerk. Not quite comparable.
- theGnuMe 2y agoUh. Demis finished his PhD...
- huijzer 2y agoAre we talking about Einstein? If I remember correctly, according to Walter Isaacson, Einstein managed to get so many good papers out not despite, but because he was not working for an university. It gave him more freedom to reject existing ideas. Also the years I can find on Wikipedia do not seem to support your claim. He started as a clerk in 1903, and had his miracle year and submitted his PhD dissertation in 1905.
- BeetleB 2y agoFrom what I've read, he explicitly sought a position that would give him time to work on his physics ideas. Whether he would or not would have achieved the same working for a university is merely his opinion. In particular, it was not the case that he was working for one, and found it to be incompatible with his research vision, and left academia to become a patent clerk. He began his work on the PhD prior to 1903.
- gcanyon 2y agoNobody defeats the patent clerk guy. I love to cite this article that argues he could credibly have been awarded anywhere from 5 to 7 Nobel prizes. https://www.quora.com/How-many-Nobel-prizes-should-Einstein-have-won-1 https://www.quora.com/How-many-Nobel-prizes-should-Einstein-...
- belter 2y agoThe infinite polygons are Nobel worth..
- theGnuMe 2y agoYes but he could have been one... He really took to AI and reignited the fire that melted the AI winter.
- lchengify 2y agoDidn't know he worked on Black & White. Black & White was really ahead of it's time for 2001, it did a much better job of having NPC simulations in groups based on how you played as a god.
- medo_baayou 2y agodon't forget that he was IM 2300 rated chess player at 13 yo
- mikhailfranco 2y agoMaybe Ken Rogoff should get the Economics prize :)
- BeetleB 2y agoSyndicate - wow. That brings back memories! I could never get it working on DosBox (some timing issue). Haven't tried in over a decade, though. Should see if I can get it working.
- mk_stjames 2y agoI'm always interested in hearing about these people who go and get a PhD in an unrelated field to their original studies, often years after leaving university and working in an industry. Here it says Hasabis did an undergraduate degree in a computer science program, and them spent a decade working on computer games at studios, and then somehow just rocked up to a university and asked to do a PhD in neuroscience. I feel if I tried to do that in the US- (where I got a masters degree in engineering, spent a 15 yrs as an aerospace engineer,)- tried to go back and ask to do a PhD in, say, Physics - I'd be promptly told to go fuck myself (or, fuck myself but then enroll in a new undergrad or maaaybe graduate program only after re-taking GRE's. Straight PhD? Never heard it work like that.)
- triceratops 2y agoAerospace engineering masters -> Physics PhD doesn't sound like a big leap to me. I don't think that's accurate.
- shnock 2y agoI think PhD's are generally different enough in Europe vs the US that this might be less surprising upon further research
- biofox 2y agoI have known a several people who made the jump from Computer Science to Biology at graduate school. Usually, it's either via genomics or neuroscience (as in Hassabis' case), where there is a large need for people who can do data crunching or computational modelling.
- adastra22 2y agoWhy do you think that? It’s not my experience. At the grad school level they’ll take anyone who can do the work and is interested. Outside experience, even in unrelated fields, is often a plus. Grad students just out of undergrad have no idea how the world works.
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- nanoxide 2y agoYep. I distinctly remember reading an interview in the German GameStar magazine in '99 or something with him where he talks about his early work with Bullfrog. Over the years I read his name from time to time as he moved towards research. Pretty amazing career.