Towards the north-east corner of the building he peers into a large void encompassing three floors, which will house the library. “We're building on the shoulders of giants,” Hassabis says, mentioning other pivotal scientific figures – Leonardo da Vinci, John von Neumann – who have made dramatic breakthroughs. “Our first office was on Russell Square, a little ten-person office at the top of a townhouse next to the London Mathematical Society,” Hassabis recalls, “which is where Turing gave his famous lectures.” Alan Turing, the British pioneer of computing, is a totemic figure for Hassabis. Due to open in mid 2020, the site represents, literally and figuratively, a new beginning for the company. Currently the building is a construction site, ringing with the relentless percussion of hammering, drilling and grinding – there are 180 contractors on-site today and this number will rise to 500 at the peak of the build. He is here to inspect what will be the new headquarters of DeepMind, the startup he founded in 2010 with Shane Legg, a fellow researcher at University College London, and childhood friend Mustafa Suleyman. The suburb is lost behind trees on Hampstead Heath, but he is able to make out the incline leading to Highgate, where he now lives with his family. Hassabis crosses the paved roof and, having used his phone to determine the direction, scans his eyes northwards to see if he can see Finchley, where he spent his childhood. The view is largely uninterrupted in every direction across the capital, which is bathed in spring sunshine. Raising his hand to shield his eyes, he gazes across London from a rooftop in King’s Cross. Demis Hassabis – former child chess prodigy, recipient of a double first at the University of Cambridge, five times World Mind Sports Olympiad champion, MIT and Harvard alumnus, games designer, teenage entrepreneur, and co-founder of the artificial intelligence startup DeepMind – is dressed in a yellow helmet, a hi-viz jacket and worker’s boots.
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