0:05Good evening everyone and welcome to this WCIT the worship company of information technology lecture in memory of pastmaster Barney Gibbons. Um firstly a couple of thanks. Thank you to HSBC Innovation Bank uh banking for being such great supporters of this uh lecture. And this year we are we have two extraordinary figures who have helped shape the digital age liverman and liver dewendy hall our new members. You are both very welcome.
0:50Great to be here. Thank you.
0:53So, I was thinking about how I start this and every video of both Demis and um and Wendy have uh their whole CD read out and I asked Mr. Gemini what's the best definition for for Dennis.
1:11So, Dennis, if anything's a miss here, then uh I would um Okay. I'm not to bl I'm not to blame. So, Sir Dennis Hasselus, co-founder and CEO of Google Deep Mine and in my opinion one of the world's leading research labs. I'm particularly excited as well that it's in this country and uh your mission is to advance AI and to apply it to major scientific and social uh uh challenges.
1:43And he built a video game called theme park which combined AI with economics and you sold 15 million copies. And that's before you even went to school after your university which I'm not going to regail because it's uh it's a very long list of things you did. Uh you built Alph Go and defeated the world champion uh Go player and alpha fold which revolutionized protein structure
2:13prediction. You are multi-dommain. You combine being a computer scientist, a neuroscientist, an entrepreneur, a former video game designer, uh, and you bring insights in multiple fields in AI research and we are very pleased to have you here, Sadis. Thank you. D Wendy Hall, one of Britain's most distinguished computer scientists, a global pioneer in web science,
2:41cross-disciplinary study on how web shapes society and vice versa. Regious professor of computer science at the University of Southampton and one of the first researchers to undertake major work in multimedia hyperdia systems.
3:01a founding leader of the web science trust along with sir Tim Bernersley who's al actually an honorary member here I know yes we both know well to advance the understanding of the worldwide web and its social impact the first woman to become professor of engineering in Southampton and a former president of the BCS and the ACM which is association of computer machinery you are an internationally respected voice
3:31on AI, internet governance and data policy and digital ethics and you are helping shape governments and institution to think about how technology impacts society. Dean Wendy, you are very welcome.
3:47Thank you very much. Which leads me to my theme in my year of mastership of the Wville company which is community. And if I say a couple of words on that, I chose the theme because I was trying to understand how AI and technology are going to impact our communities, our people, our industry, which touches the four pillars of this organization,
4:14which are charity, industry, education, and fellowship. And so today I'm going to pose my first question on skills and AI literacy to you de Mendy uh nearly uh a decade after your 2017 review.
4:34What does a serious national AI strategy look like now from schools to university to mid-careers to reskilling our people?
4:43And I was just wondering, is the UK still missing or misreading this skills challenge?
4:53Oh, well, that's three questions in one.
4:55I can't believe it's 10 years. Uh Deus was there when we when we did that. So, I wanted to co-chair it with him, but he was already too busy. Do you remember?
5:04Yes, I remember. We we tried to input into it.
5:07You did. You did. Right. But he wouldn't co-chair it. So, but anyway, that's fair enough. He was building deep mind. Um so he was living it living the dream. So um and and unfortunately my answers aren't very positive. Uh the UK did very well. In fact we were I like to say we were the first to develop a national strategy. In fact Canada did beat us to it but I think ours is better known. And we
5:37actually we did the whole percenting report was 2017 and then the national strategy was developed by the what we set up out of that the office for AI and the AI council and the national strategy evolved from that in 21 during the covid years. I remember all the calls um and I was AI skills champion for a while that there is no AI skills champion now that the um there's no AI
6:06council there is no independent body overseeing what the 400 people in DC do in the AI unit and I think I think the UK's loses a trick in that many many countries and I traveled the world meeting governments around the world picked up on our strategy. Many copied it. You can see elements of it, words of it in other countries strategies, you know, and Singapore, for example, followed our
6:35playbook and did it better. So, they're now overtaking us in the league of um developing AI for a tiny island. and they back hugely above their weight and um they're overtaking us in the league tables of you know it's very clear it's US China and China we were then third in the tables of um AI um strategies and and um adoption we've
7:04slipped and Singap and Singapore took really have done it incredibly well um and others countries are doing it too ours ours now we do well And we can talk about later the things we are doing well. Um it will come up later in the discussion. But the skills piece is very very patchy.
7:23Unfortunately there has there were several things came out of the whole percent review. All those recommendations were taken forward MSC's PhDs very little for schools. There's very little guidance for schools on AI. and you know that it you see things coming out in a quite a fragmented way. So it does but there is no I don't think there's any oversight of AI skills in this country at the moment.
7:53Sorry to say that but it's true.
7:55How about you Dennis? What's your view on that?
7:57Yeah well um I'd probably suggest something much more radical. So um I would agree I agree with Wendy. had an interesting head start in 2017 but you know 10 years in AI is like a century in most industries right or maybe two you know maybe a millennia so um a lot has changed I think we did a good job I think I remember that actually we sponsored some of these masters did absolutely and I think that helped a lot actually we see today um London and the
8:26UK is doing really well in things like uh startups and I think we tried to anchor that at with deep mind and brought a lot of talent into the tree and then now 10 years later that a lot of those people are now spinning out other things and this is great to see.
8:39Um we need to do more of that. I'm sure we'll come to that discussion later, but specifically skilling and schools, I do I absolutely agree with Wendy. Now, we need to look to the to the to the secondary school level, maybe even the primary school level. The the the the horse has bolted in the sense they're all using the LLMs and chat bots in their spare time and and for homework and things like that, but it's very unsistatic and it's a bit like I feel like government policies and education systems a bit like, oh, I wish that
9:07would go away, but but it's it's not. we we're going to have to lean into it and and help teachers and schools and parents and students work out or how do we get the benefits out of it, not just probably the way that people are using it now and kids using now and I see my kids, you know, will just help help them almost cheat on their homework or shortcut things. And we know that that will result in deficit of skills, traditional skills, let alone AI and computer skills later on. But I think we got an opportunity here. Maybe it's time
9:36for a new review for you to write, Wendy. This is why I would if I was going to input into this is what I would suggest is we need to invert the classroom in my opinion. So I would lean into a this is what I would do if I was in charge of education. I would say school in school should be about um people skills, projects, entrepreneurialism, creativity, judgment, all the things that you might expect the skills to be important in 5 10 years time when AGI's arrived. I know we're going to debate about AGI, but
10:05even just extrapolation of today's AI, there'll be things AI can do well and then there'll be things that will need human judgment, taste, all of these things. But these are not taught in schools today.
10:16But but so I'll come to that. So the school so I think in class it should be about human human contact. How do you organize groups of people into projects like a Montyurus school but plus+ um or maybe you get at like Oxbridge and places like these sort of the top universities these kind of individual um supervisions right but you bring that into the classroom out of classroom is where you do the rote learning that would be my opinion aided by personalized AI that basically tailors
10:45the rote learning to the speed and the exact personalized to the exact speed of the student and what they need to do. It's crazy that we do a ones fits all sizefits-all in class anyway on rope learning. Doesn't work because you you have to cater to the average. What about the kids that are behind or the kids that are ahead? Good luck on both sides.
11:03So here with AI, you can actually personalize it so everyone gets exactly the tailored uh curriculum that they need. And then in school, it's all about projects. I think teachers would love that personally. And then you could have world-class teachers that are like kind of almost like superstars that do the lecturing and they're really good. You know, why do we expect every school teacher, every lecturer to be amazing at lecturing the same course? That's just completely redundant amount of work.
11:29When I have when I talk to teacher friends of mine, you know, and they have to come, each of them has to teach GCSE maths and then bring create their own slide decks. Why are we in that world?
11:38It should just be one. And and then it's not then the remote learning you do at your own speed at home with the help of AI. That's that's what I would do. But I don't I don't know if the countries somewhere like Singapore will do this in my opinion or UAE.
11:52Can I riff off riff off of that because I agree with almost everything you've said there? I think the rope learning doesn't have to be done at home and some we have a there's not there's no equality around this. There's a lot of kids can't do this at home, right? And um we have to be uh I definitely agree that the that we we can use AI to stop the one-sizefits-all. One teacher, 30 pupils, they're all different. Teachers can teach much better if if the children are receptive to what they're going to
12:20say and already done the basic stuff, whether it's home or school or wherever. And I I've always been in fact my first I don't know if you have ever told you this my first piece of AI code I wrote in 1984 to build an intelligent tutoring system on a BBC micro in prologue.
12:40You'll understand what that means just not even proof of concept just an idea right that I got from my tutor at university. But um I've always been in I've always believed passionately that we we can use computing and now AI to develop personalized uh systems tutoring systems for kids that will help everybody get to the same sort of level but that takes a huge commitment from government to make that happen and uh I'd love to yeah to help
13:09do that um and then and then taking the step one uh one step forward going to university is it now become come pretty redundant that we have a computer science degree because of course not at all.
13:23Of course not. You exactly I mean you you you absolutely needed to lean into STEM and computer science because no matter it's just a higher level programming language is the way you can think about what programming is going to become. You know we used to program in m in machine code then there was C then there's Python and now it's going to be perhaps it's going to be English. But that's fine. Like you're still going to need to know about architecting things and uh software best software engineering practices. Those people who understand the the deep technical,
13:51they'll be able to use these tools 10 times more effectively than people that don't have that technical knowledge.
13:56So absolutely we need people to apply, but we also need AI across the board. So things we're doing at Southampton, I know other universities similar. We we've actually developing something called an AI driving license for um all students who arrive in the university next. This good plug but others um arrive in the university in October will be this will be available to them and staff and think of it like your highway code you know this is for non-science students really to get them up to speed.
14:25Some of them will already be doing it of course with their own but um to get them up to speed how they can use AI. We have a policy on how to use AI in education.
14:33And we have also set ourselves a target that by next academic year, every discipline, every degree in the university, there'll be a module on AI customized to that, whether it's history, psychology, geography, physics, whatever. Customized. That's a huge task, by the way. But that's what we've set ourselves.
14:54And presumably, you're going to have to tweak the uh curriculum as well. I was just going to say you so I think you need to teach STEM and computer science and continue that's very valuable training but the curriculum has to change to you know there might be very different things that one should study absolutely well I mean if you talk I don't I don't if you heard Mike Waldridge talk recently about the way it's going to change the computer science computer science AI taught as a part of computer science my I mean we do
15:22an AI degree a lot of universities are already um we've taught computer science with AI for a long time, but we now have a set. We have computer science and we have AI. And I'm passionate about getting how to getting information about AI to non-science students as well.
15:39And particularly the risks and the other other social effects of of doing this that will also have to be brought into the curriculum presumably.
15:53Yes. I mean, and that's across the board as well. You know, I think that was already that was actually even part of, if I remember correctly, the the original your original report of like, you know, ethics being taught and challenges as alongside the technical aspects of computer science. I think all computer scientists need to be trained in that.
16:09Um, and by the way, I also believe that the time is now for the humanities like philosophy, economics, like I think we really need, you know, in the world we're about to enter into uh post AGI and these things um that's a new era in my opinion. So I feel like uh you know that those types of think that type of thinking is going to be really needed. I was wondering how long it would take you Dennis has actually mentioned AGI and uh No, he's gone one further. He's mentioned post AGI and I was just
16:39wondering if for the uninitiated audience here and take it seriously and listening. I just wanted to give us a just a feel of what how things will change with AGI uh and the benefits as you see it and also the time scales. I know you say 2030 and onwards but a little bit of color on that would be very good.
17:01Yeah. I mean firstly my definition of AGI is is is you know a system that you can test and exhibits all the cognitive capabilities humans have. The reason that's important is um the human reference point and the human brain reference point is the human brain is the only existence proof we have we know of perhaps in the universe that uh exhibits general intelligence. And I believe that brain is a sort of an approximate cheuring machine. Obviously, cheuring, one of my all-time heroes, he showed what cheuring universal cheering
17:30machines, you know, can compute anything. So that's computable uh maybe apart from like quantum systems and other things. It's a bit out of scope for today. But I think um I think that that's what an AI system is. And that means it should be able to do the types of uh creative things and invention things that we know the best scientists were able to do. Today's systems are nowhere near that. They're not consistent enough. um they can't do they have missing capabilities. They're very impressive in many ways but they also as we've all interacted with them every day
17:59these these LLMs they're missing some components now that may get solved with scaling um but it may also require one or two big breakthroughs still uh like transformers were or things like reinforcement learning applied to deep learning like we did with Alph Go. So the jury's out on that. Um I think it's going to be given the amount of resources and brain power going into it um uh you know around four or five years is is my expectation from from where we are today. So around 2030 um and then
18:29when that happens you know this that that becomes a new type of tool or uh system that we've never seen before and we'll need to uh uh think about how to use such a transformative piece of technology. uh and it's going to change everything in my opinion, economies, um perhaps even the human condition. But I I'm a very of course the positive part of that would be advancing science, curing uh diseases, advancing medicine.
18:56This is why I spent my whole career working on AI and what we call AGI technologies. We help popularize that term. Um but obviously there are challenges with systems and we already see the beginnings of that with the Gentic systems that become more and more autonomous. How do we make sure they stay on the guardrails that we set and they do the things that we want? Um uh then there's questions of things like uh you know beyond that uh of of as the machines get more capable consciousness other things which maybe we'll get into but um the first step is to get these
19:26tools right and you have an interesting uh well I don't agree with Dennis on all this I I respect what he does right and I if everybody was like Demis we'd be all right but they aren't okay. Yeah, they aren't Dennis. Right. So, there are people that are just in this for the money or the power um and um we'll release anything and say it does everything
19:53um without any testing, any evaluation, any safety checks, any guidelines. This is happening in the states at the moment. I will I loved that.
20:02Ironically, love that you did a debate with Dario at Davos. I call it the Demis and Dario at Davos debate. Okay. the four Ds and I use this with my students because it was Debis saying the things he's just said here and Dario who was out there to get the money for his company and is now going IPO saying we're going to we're going to reach AGI by the end of this year and you were trying to pull him back in that right make some because well actually there was a bit so let me
20:30roll back the big thing for me if and I don't accept it but if um we reach some form of something you accept as AGI by 2030 which I I don't I personally am not on that side of the fence but if then that gives us four years to sort out global governance of AI because otherwise we've got machines that are cleverer than us in our some aspects and the big thing is that if the if the
20:59software we're building starts to decide to do things on its own the sort of I'm sorry Dave I can't do that moment Right.
21:10And this will inevitably happen. Um, you know, and Steven Hawings of 2014 said, "If we build machines that are clever, I'm not using the word intelligence, by the way, here. Um, I'll come just say one more thing about that." He said that was the end of the human race. That's one of the last things Stephen Hawking said in a BBC interview. There are threats. We absolutely have to have a global governance um in place.
21:37um the and there this I mean I was on the UN high level advisory board. It won't be not enough people um the UN isn't what it used to be and it won't be of the UN but it will it could spin out of the UN. There's the global dialogue starting in July where some governments are going to come together and start really talking about what this means.
21:59And just this week Trump went back on his word and said we have got to start um what did he say not regulate what's the word he used the companies and the check evaluate the software that's coming out I can't remember the word he used so he he because he when he came into power he he um what's he called he he did a what did the president executive order executive order he overturned Biden's rule and he he um did an executive order that said no
22:28regulation at and he stopped the states regulating. Well, he went back on that this week or his government did and said we because and actually it was because I think the tipping point was the mythos um software from uh uh anthropic.
22:44It's yeah, it's also not just that.
22:46There's a lot of people input I'm spending a lot of we're spending a lot of our time inputting into those things behind the scenes. We don't shout about that from the rooftops. Mythos is a has been a very interesting good trigger because it worried the banks and and Besson which is always the be you know that's when people take things seriously right to talking to HSBC people here um you know when the banks get worried then then then government wakes up which is you know maybe it's a good thing and and that means there's a window of opportunity here I think to do something
23:15and I think that's why we saw the executive order eventually get through and but it's it's not enough and and and there's more and actually we're in um I mean as you know Wendy we're in total agreement I do think there needs to be kind of an international standards um you know I I'm my view is and maybe where we disagree is timelines on AGI but my point is is that there's a I actually talk about it as if 50% chance of 2030 with some obviously margins of error but the point is it could happen depending on things like recursive
23:45self-improvement if that works so there's a lot of thing people are working a lot of things that could speed up the timelines right if those things don't work then it may take longer, but that's great. Then we'll just have more time. But my view is we don't have the right institutions fit for purpose to deal with something as consequential as this. All of the unfortunately this is happening at a moment where the geopolitics is as complex as it's been in 30 years. It's it's more fragmented than ever. Um the UN is not what it was as Wendy was saying. So you know maybe one could have imagined in fact I did
24:15imagine 20 years ago maybe it would be some form of technical u subcommittee of the UN or something. that's unthinkable now. And and so I feel like um the there's not a lot of time even 4 years, let's say it's 10 years, you know, that would be better in some ways if Wendy's right if it takes a bit longer because then we have more time to get ready and society to get ready. But look, you we got to we got to take it seriously is what I'm explaining to people who care about this that it might be sooner. So that that's the point I'm making is the
24:45urgency. It's absolutely urgent now, right? We've just seen mythos cyber that's just the beginning. I'm more worried about things like biorisk coming down the line. Obviously, this is something that I work very closely on to try and cure, you know, as many diseases as possible with alpha fold. But those, you know, those kinds of tools can in the wrong hands can also be misused. And so, there are two things I worry about.
25:05Misuse of general purpose technologies by by by rogue actors for harmful ends. That can happen. You know, not what would those tools were intended for.
25:14That even affects things like open source, which is generally good, but how do you restrict bad use cases of that?
25:20That's a big problem we don't know how to solve. Uh and then there's the technical question that Wendy alluded to is the making sure the systems as they get more autonomous, more powerful, more smart, how do we make sure that they stick to the guardrails we set them? And then even if we solve those technical questions, then there's the economics questions. How does all of society broadly benefit? Not just a few, you know, handful of companies, a handful of people. Uh that that that we, you know, that's not a good end. That's not a good way for society to go. And then beyond that, even if we get that right, there's
25:49the philosophical question about meaning and purpose. But so there's a whole stack of issues, each one more complex in my opinion, and we've got to get going yesterday on these things.
26:00So I've started naming it with others.
26:02We're going to create an international AI agency.
26:07Let's just call it something. And it could it can uh spin out of the work the UN doing. It won't be of the UN. It could be it needs to be independent. We need to get I say we I mean the people that care about this. There's no particular organization or b group of people um and it's got to involve the tech company's got to involve governments and it's got to involve civil society but it's got to be something that the companies and governments can sign up to. Someone's
26:35got to fund it too. So but that's like you know this we we we cannot just sit back and say someone else is going to do it. We we have to. So I'll be in AI in Geneva in July. You going uh I'm not sure.
26:54There's the first the d the first dialogue coming um uh global dialogue about this is is happening in Geneva that is being run by the UN but it doesn't mean what comes of it has to be of the UN. I mean that's why the by the way the the AI summits that um was started in the UK with with Sunax government and we were highly supportive of that and helping push that that I think those summits have been good they're not enough but at least they're getting the international community together uh to try and talk about some of these these subjects
27:23nothing came out of India demis sure but but 250,000 people at a conference when how long have people been trying to do climate change cop meetings for can't we can't the evidence of of so this is what there has to be a different route like talking shops are not going to be enough so um and I just don't think the UN has the power to do anything currently so it's going to be need to be new institutions um but you know that's a tricky needle to thread a lot of it a lot of us are working and I'm working
27:53trying to work behind the scenes on this you know I appreciate Wendy's working you know front and center on these things I think both are needed actually behind the scenes advice and maneuvering and then you head on tackling of this.
28:06We haven't mentioned China either.
28:08We will come to China soon. Um, but in terms of the big tech companies actually taking part in this, is is it not like Turkeykey's voting for Christmas though?
28:18No, of course not. In fact, they want it actually.
28:21All that's the thing actually all the all the I mean, I know all the lab leaders um they're all characters. Let's put it that way. But there but nobody wants catastrophic things to happen.
28:31That's no good for any companies. It's no good for any individuals any reputations so or for business. So it sort of even if some of them are are genuinely worried and scientifically worried and they always have been I know their motivations from a long time back.
28:45People like Dario we we used to chat about these things when we were both posttos others have come lately and maybe they're more interested in power and money but it doesn't matter what you're interested in. You don't want catastrophic things happening and nor does government. uh even the most most uh capitalist should we say or marketdriven governments don't want that or or authoritarian actually frankly so there is hope here because actually it's in everyone's interest to come to some sort of agreement the problem is the usual tragedy of the commons prisoners dilemma issues um which is why we need
29:15some kind of governance and and government involvement because the companies it's always in someone's interest to make money you know by defecting from some agreed protocol right that's the problem um it's and individually I think all of the the good news is I would say all of the researchers and lab leaders and company leaders I talk to in this space do want something to happen uh and and do want some uh guard rails and some standards.
29:40Um the question is what those are, how that should operate and and who should run that. Um but me and others we're we're making proposals behind the scenes to to you know some of the main governments.
29:53That's great to hear. Thank you.
29:55Just moving to See, when you said I know you're going to come Well, I don't know. When you said the big tech companies, you meant the ones on the west coast of America.
30:04Yeah. So, don't you care about the big tech companies in China and what they're doing?
30:09Yes. I mean, this this they I mean, China would love to run whatever agency we might set up. They would do it because their support, you know, they they want they are as in as Demis said they are as keen not have a catastrophe in AI as for many different reasons and the same reasons as as the West is but actually they they would love to run whatever we're going to set up. And the other thing about China, I'm sorry I'm going into it because I don't think you can avoid it, is they largely produce their models. You know, they're
30:38producing open code and much more open and and there's good and bad about that, but they are much more welcoming of these ideas of than say the US government is.
30:51Okay. Since we're talking about China, I was just wondering uh whether a lot of the uh investment and a lot of the um stuff that's happening in AI is in the US and China and are we going to just be uh as a country are our companies just going to be left behind and be uh watching and being users of the
31:18technology rather than like what you've Dennis is being an inventor of such technologies.
31:24Well, we can't be I mean I think it's important that uh and I've told this to all various European leaders that you can't just be I told this to Macron back in around 2017 and he tried to do something about it. You cannot be world champions at regulation only. That's not a thing. Exactly. Right. So to have a se I literally told him that and I said you can you know you've got to also be leading in the technology and have lead some leading companies and leading academics so that you can have a seat at
31:53the table. So first of all you see what's coming down the line uh ahead of time uh and you also have a sort of moral authority to have a seat around the table and be listened to. And um there was a time when I was trying to encourage a sort of trilateral thing with Britain, France and Canada because I would say those three countries were uh kind of the the next best at research after the two superpowers US and China.
32:18actually as a three if you look at citations papers researchers it's pretty like those three countries together now you could include some other European countries and also there's Singapore and so on but those three could could create a kind of moderate bull work between the two superpowers didn't quite happen for politics and other reasons but there's still an opportunity there I think the UK is still uniquely positioned to to to take advantage of this we've tried to do our bit of obviously we're part of Google but I kept eat headquartered here
32:47we bought thousands thousand of top researchers here. You know, they did some great work at DeepMine. Many of them then after five, six, 10 years went and started other things. And once you embed yourself in a in a location, you stay tend to stay there, right? Family reasons, other things you'd like the city and so on. And I think we're seeing that. And all ecosystems need anchors like that. Silicon Valley was not Silicon Valley until Huelet Packard and and and Intel, all these kind of companies seeded it, right? And there but they also came from strong
33:16universities nearby. Stanford, Berkeley and so on. And we we have that here. The Golden Triangle, you know, Cambridge, Oxford, Hampton, UC, we got so many strong these things take centuries to build up. We have those assets. We have very smart people. Um we just need to have more ambition and utilize them here and hopefully government encourage that or at least not get in the way of that.
33:36And um I think we're doing pretty well here, but we could do better. Um and then the next stage is is financing the growth stage of companies which is missing which I think maybe some of the financiers in the room can can think how would we do that. I think the stock exchange needs some some um uh updating. I don't know why companies don't float on the London stock exchange anymore.
33:56They you know they will go to the US.
33:58There's obviously some problem there that needs to be addressed and and I just think uh we could be we could take advantage of this moment. We have all the right ingredients. The other big thing is we've got to address energy costs and our energy dependence partly for security reasons. So perhaps there's going to be a confluence of good things here. But we have the most expensive energy in the western world.
34:18And the problem with that is that's going to directly translate into intelligence. It's literally watts to dollars to um tokens. So that's that you cannot build our industry out. This that's the new industrial base, right?
34:31If you believe what's going to happen with AI is data centers, information, it's tokens. how much can you inference per per unit cost? And so this is vital now. It's vital for all our industries, but it's it's going to be vital for the industries of the future. So, and then that will pay itself if we're going to I don't know if we're going to get to climate and and environment, but obviously there's a worry about that with the data centers and things like that. But actually I just think that's a bit to me that's a red herring because that if we build these technologies
34:59right they will be the it will be AI that will help us deliver the technologies of the future that will actually solve climate change. So we're working on fusion, material design, better solar power, power power, you know, all sorts of things. We're are going to be advancing this new renaissance here I see coming. We could be at the forefront of that and that will is the thing that will then, you know, completely change the climate equation, not trying to shave off 1% or 2% right now. Can I come into that because um riffing off of that the you
35:29know we'll all I think in the future we will talking to our engineers at Southampton we will all want a data center in our in our city or our town because they will we'll turn the we'll turn it round we'll flip it so they become the generators of power electricity in the future. Yeah, it's it's it's abs it's where it's going to go. The other thing I want to say that we are good at here um and something you're going to see quite a bit about over the next few weeks. Firstly, we
35:56have thanks to what Richie Sunnak did the best AI security institute in the worlding right uh they are the best and they are setting the benchmarks for how you evaluate what's coming out of the tech companies.
36:10I wish they do China as well as America but anyway that's another whole issue.
36:14Um and uh we are part of the network of those around the world which are now called the network of of um uh AI evaluation measurement and science or measurement science. They've changed the name because Trump didn't want them to be called security institutes. Um and we also have funded a new center for AI measurement at the national physical laboratory. Um, and this is a whole
36:41driving the whole science of AI, not AI for science, but the science of AI, which I think is something we we're very good in this country at leading on these types of new sciences. I think that's a huge potential for the future. And it's all comes under the umbrella of what is being called AI assurance, which um we're also very good at the doing this type of stuff in the UK. And you're going to see an announcement in London Tech Week next week from the
37:09government about a new or growing that as a as a career not just for technical people but for people who are going to run the AI assurance industry and we'll be able to lead on that in here in the UK if if we keep going and I think this government's got that right.
37:27100% agree on that. that just again to call the praise out of the AI safety institute as it was called security institute now in the UK is the world leading and we we are extremely good at that and I think that's something our academic base can feed into too because you actually want um uh non-co company uh organizations doing that type of work really right uh and so I think that is leading the way and I think that's one way towards having the technical capability for whatever standards body there is you need the techn you know you
37:56need the highly technical folks and those could come from these uh security institutes networks.
38:02Super. Thank you. Um I'm going to just switch to a slightly different uh topic now. I'm just going to ask Emis, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned about UK and the and the and the power of the brain that we have here. We have got a good talent pool. I was very keen to understand a why did you set up uh Deep Mind in the UK? you still run deep mind in the UK which is phenomenal in London.
38:30It's great for us uh as a company as well. Um but what we want to I wanted to ask you how do we uh find new British breakthroughs and create global businesses out of them? Well, look, I I started Deep Mine in London for a few reasons. Um, one is that I was born and grew up here and I love the country and love London and I love the where I studied at Cambridge and so on and the things it gave to me and I wanted to
38:59give back. Second thing but the on the commercial side as a personal reason on the commercial side of things there was a lot of talent in the UK and actually in Europe that was untapped. So the the story I used to tell my early investors was imagine you're a physics PhD from Cambridge. Okay, world class, but you don't want to stay in academia in physics. You want and but you want to stay in the UK and you want to do a job that really um stretches your mind, right? The only option for you would be to go into finance and hedge funds.
39:28Excuse the finance people in the room, but I wanted to give a different option, right? Other than that, like what if you wanted to stay in something scientific or deep tech? So I just felt this is back in 2010. This is like the, you know, the dark ages. Like, no one was doing any AI, deep tech, anything like that in London. And so I had the whole field to myself. So I was hiring these amazing people for like 50k a year. You can't even get an intern for a day for that these days in AI, right? Um, and so that was incredible on a on a shoestring
39:57budget. We had, you know, we we we raised a couple of million to just try and get going. And uh I could hire world-class people, not just from the UK, but all around Europe. EPFL, ETH, uh, and and the top French schools and there was just nothing that was that was rivaling that. So that was an amazing, uh, for to begin with and it lasted for about six, seven years and then big tech sort of realized there was a lot of talent here and they've all set up their their their satellite offices here which is good for the UK actually because it
40:27brings more and more talent and investment here and you see that around all around King's Cross. the whole of King's Cross is is now this amazing place because of all the tech investment that's gone in. And then again, you know, those people stay for a few years and then they maybe they go and do startups. So that's the other thing. And then the the final thing was I just I think our um a bit of an underdog story is I kind of wanted to prove that it could be done here. Um and that uh we could we were I just felt we were punching under our weight in this in
40:56this area. And I think we proved a point with with with Deep Mind and hopefully that inspired and I think it has inspired the next generation of you know founders to start amazing things here uh in hard technologies deep tech whether it's like quantum or fusion or or um you know indeed finance and banking. So um but I think we could go further. We need we now need to produce our our first let's say trillion dollar company here that that that remains independent and grows here. That's probably the next challenge for the UK ecosystem. But I I
41:25I believe we'll we'll we'll do that and there are pockets of that like stock Daniel X trying to do this in Stockholm, you know, with Spotify and then he's inspiring a next generation of entrepreneurs there and you just need a few things to happen and seed and then the ecosystems with the government's help can can build on that.
41:43Yeah. But the key is the government's help. That's where we don't get it. There are people in this room who are working on that very thing. you know that and and it's treasury and you just can't get through the change the way they do things. to the missing opportunities. I think yeah, we've got the brains. We've got the universities.
42:04Is that okay? We got the universities.
42:07We got, as you said, Dem to repeat that all the talent here. Um, amazing talent here. Other countries, I mean, well, I mean, if you look at what's happening in America and how this government is stopping funding research in America, it's very scary. It's good opportunity for us though. And of course, you got China. Sorry to keep mentioning China, but you have but um you know we have a fantastic opportunity to to ride high now but we do need the government to to sort out the the how we get the
42:36investment into the companies. We can get the unicorns. It's getting it to the next level the next level now.
42:43And and just one more question for you Dennis. Uh I was very keen to understand why did you choose protein folding as the first uh Yes. Well, look, I I I spent my whole life working on AI because I thought it would be the ultimate tool for science.
43:00So, I've always been interested in the big questions, you know, of the nature of reality. How do things work? And for me, my expression of that was to build the best tool to help scientists. Now, protein folding and and protein structure prediction, I came across that as an undergrad in Cambridge. A lot of my biologist friends, one of specifically was obsessed with that and would talk about it all the time. So, I listened very carefully. I I tend to try to listen very carefully especially about people who are very passionate
43:28about things and I thought it was an amazing first of all an amazing scientific question. Um it was an amazing it's like the ultimate puzzle.
43:35How does this you know one-dimensional uh uh genetic sequence fold up into this exquisite three-dimensional little nano machines? Amazing. And it was also what I call a root node problem. If you cracked it, it would open up whole new branches of discovery, right? drug discovery, fundamental biology understanding. And I'm always attracted to these, you know, it was described to me once as Fat's last theorem equivalent for biology. So, who can resist that?
44:02And people have been trying to solve it for 50 years. Um, and then the other thing was I just even back then, this was in the '90s, we didn't of of course we had none of the technology that we have today, but I could feel it was the sort right sort of problem for AI to perhaps help with. So I just filed it in the back of my mind for like nearly 20 years really 15 years and then until the day after we had the Alph Go match and I came back from South Korea and you know not only we won the match but Alph Go
44:30had played an original move this move 37. So it made a sort of discovery obviously in the m in the in the limited domain of a game but still kind of unbelievable that it could do that and that was what I was waiting to see having a system that could not only perform at that level but do those kind of things and the day I got back is when I you know we started the alpha project fantastic I hadn't heard that before good that's good it's probably and now and now we continue now we continue with isomeorphic labs this new
45:00spin out in UK cuz I feel there's isomorphism between biology and information sciences. I think biology can be thought of as an information processing system because I'm an algebraic topologist, right? So my PhD was in all this sort of stuff. I'm fascinated.
45:15Yeah, you Yeah, you'll like the name. So that's that's and that's that's building on what Alpha did, which is protein structure, but that's only one it's an important but only one component of the drug discovery process. And that's a that's a field I think that needs to be completely reimagined. And that's what we're trying to do with isomeorphic.
45:33Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next three to five years in in the pharmaceutical industry.
45:38Yes. I Yeah. Very very interesting times. We we'll be watching what you guys do because you're doing something with material sciences as well.
45:47Yeah. That's a separate thing. So we're doing that at deep mind. So we we're applying AI at deep mind to many areas of science but those are earlier stage. They're they're like pre-alpha fold stage. But material science, we're helping with fusion containing plasma and fusion reactors, uh, mathematics, weather prediction. We work with the MET office. Uh, we've got the best hurricane prediction algorithms in the world.
46:09They're like they're also way faster than the traditional fluid dynamic systems. So that was actually used by the US Met Office for Hurricane Melissa last year to predict which path it would go down. And it ended up going veering into Jamaica. And they, you know, if you can give tw 124 hours more warning, that's huge difference for outcome on the ground.
46:30It's a It's a pity we couldn't predict the RMD strike today.
46:35Yes. That's a lot harder.
46:37It's a lot harder cuz it's about people.
46:38Humans. Exactly. They're the most complex things to predict.
46:41Uh my clark is giving me really bad looks thinking we she wants to start the questions, but um she's smiling now. Um but I just want to touch on something NI that you said earlier on which is equality and I'm very curious a very short answer on this please. Are we going to open doors for people uh regardless of gender background privilege or does technology risk actually taking us down a different
47:09path? Well, I I mean, you know, I I have to say people and I I I really was reluctant to use the word obedience because when I got married, I refused to have the wedding ceremony that had the word obey in it, right? But I obeyed here. So um I but um so I been passionate about uh I'm going to start with the gender thing.
47:35I've been passionate about uh the lack of women in computing since 19 the 1980s when I started in computing and my the scary thing is it's got worse rather than better and in AI it's far worse right you look at Silicon Valley and the leadership is all one monoculture
48:00um and um I I you know I see the younger generation of me and Sue there sitting in the audience. We've been trying to do this for so long coming in and looking at with all new but we can change this we can change this you know the amarie imidians of this world and we haven't shifted the dial in the last 40 years um and it's it's it's so important it's
48:28even more important in AI my mentor one of them was Karen Spark Jones and she had them she used to put on her t-shirts if she um computing is too important to be left to men you know that one. This is not to denigrate men. This is to say it's for all of us, right? We need everybody involved in this industry. We need um we need and it's not just gender diversity, but I now say AI is too important to be left to men, right? It's it's actually more important because of
48:58all the things that if we're going to get to this holy grail of AGI then um we we have to think about what type of society we're building or we want to build. Now I know that someone like Demis understands this has got to be done but there's a lot of people out there that don't. They glibly talk about AGIS is it's all going to be the same.
49:20we just have these very clever machines and it'll we'll just carry on life as it we we are now. It won't be like that. So we have to think through what type of society we're trying to build. What type I mean you have u there's only so much that you can say so long you can say to people right your jobs are going to go your kids aren't going to have a career or a job and anyway this could wipe out the human race. There is the beginning there is the beginning of a resistance
49:49movement to AI and I think that's very dangerous. I remember some of you here will remember when people were saying no nuclear bombs in my town and there's all the you know the green and common women and everything that fighting the nuclear bombs because people feel feel powerless right in America they feel totally powerless at the moment they don't understand how this government got elected really we feel powerless because
50:17once you have elected a government then you have no control over what they're going to do. So, I mean, my um I love saying this, my PA, her 18-year-old daughter, she's very bright young lady going to Bristol University to study something clever and she she told her mom the other week that her class have decided their classroom is AI free.
50:40Right? you like but that's what the and the people um students at Southampton I'm sure in other universities are saying because we're telling them how to use AI in their studies and they're saying we don't want to do that if this stuff is all the things the companies are telling us we don't want anything to do with it now we've got to we don't want that to we want people to grasp the the great opportunities that AI will afford us so that's something we've got to tackle and it's won't it's not part
51:09of the safety It's it's part of um and the tech companies have got to get involved with this and and I don't know where governments fit in but we have got to have this discussion um as and and think about what type of society we're trying to build where we've got these very clever potentially intelligent I use that carefully because I think I'm going to say one other thing then I'll shut up which is that I think there's a difference between machine intelligence and human intelligence and we might get AGI but it's not they're not going to be
51:40Thank you. Um, I've got a question from the floor for you. Uh, it's from the policy chairman of the city of London Corporation, my very dear friend Chris Haywood.
51:50Thank you very much, master. It's a it's a question to you, sis, if I may. And it's in two parts. And the first part is if there is one policy decision that the UK needs to take in the next 12 months to lead not just in building AI but in deploying it responsibly at scale particularly in financial services which is the area I represent. What would it be? And the second part to the question is where do you see the greatest opportunity for collaboration between
52:19organizations like Deep Mind, other leaders in the ecosystem and institutions such as the City of London Corporation uh to help accelerate safe adoption.
52:31Right. Okay. So, two good questions. Um I think the first one I probably would talk about um two things actually which is one is the energy situation. I think that needs to be addressed anyway for security, but I think it's doubly important given the AI economy coming down the line. We need to be part of that. We need to build data centers. We need to have that first party stuff here on the ground and take advantage of that. Um the second thing is what we also talked earlier about sorting out how do we get from unic we do very well
53:00getting to unicorns. How do we get to the to the really big global influential companies? We need some of those here.
53:07That's the next challenge and I think government has to be part of that. stock exchange, the whole ecosystem, your world needs to sort that out. I think you know to help uh allow for that to happen. So I think it could happen with the right uh uh uh ecosystem. Um and then the second thing on the on the you know what can we do more and collaborate? I mean I think these kinds of forums are good. This is why uh I was delighted to participate in this. I think it's great and it's always fun chatting with Wendy too. these kinds of
53:36forums where we bring together but also maybe not just technologists but we need to this is the amazing thing about London specifically we actually have worldass things in many domains so the US as you know that's split across different cities right and the government's in DC then you've got New York's financing you know life sciences is Boston and so on and then you got Silicon Valley uh and then you got entertainment in LA we have all of that
54:03pretty much to a worldclass level in one city and I have always been a huge believer in multi-disiplinary work. I'm even more of a believer in that now and I think AI can enable that because it allows you to get expert quite quickly at some other subject area. And I also think what we need to do uh to solve like actually I totally agree with Wendy's earlier point about that's what I was meaning about philosophy. It was just a highly flutin way of saying it.
54:28We need to work out intentionally what sort of society do we want to have and build in a post AI AGI world. Forget the term. The term is irrelevant. When we're not disagreeing about the term, forget the timeline. Who cares if it's 5 10 years, even 15. It's soon. It's in our lifetimes. It's in our kids there's lifetimes. It's going to happen. So just deal with that. That's is that's a given. The horse is not going back into the stable. It's happening. We need to then work out what do we want to do
54:57about it. The future is not written. It is not. It's for us society to write that. But only if we approach it without fear. We've got to it's it's a challenging thing. It's scary. There's uncertainty. I think even the the no one has the answers. None of the big tech people have the no no scientists have answers yet. But it doesn't mean there aren't answers out there. It's for us as society to decide that. And I think that requires all parts of society to be involved. And I'm meaning the humanities, the science, as
55:26well as the sciences and the tech and industry and government. And I think the UK and London could be a center for that actually. Um, but only if we're successful enough economically and technically to have a seat at the table. That's it's all it's that's the prerequisite for then having a voice that others will listen to.
55:47Okay. Thank you. The next qu uh I mean did you want to just add a bit fine okay um next question deputy master Gary Moore master thank you uh interesting you use the words uh the future has not been written um in Frank Herbert's Dune universe the prohibition of thinking machines became a foundational background of that civil civilization it
56:17stemmed from a catastrophic interplanetary war uh where artificial intelligence and sentient robots enslaved humanity. Nice positive start to the question. Uh so you've you've touched on this already uh but as we move to AGI and uh perhaps thinking about regulation do you have any reflections in a world where some of this stuff's already open source how we manage rogue actors not just
56:46those who submit to regulation.
56:49Well we have to pass laws that that have teeth.
56:55Well, we've got to that's my I mean we've got we've got to actually I mean take for example deep fakes, right?
57:03I don't we don't have laws to deal with these properly. Sorry, I've got we um you know if someone takes someone else's image and does something awful with it, that should be illegal. And when that if if and when they get caught, they there should be teeth in however the sentence is. That's simple. There's going to be harder stuff to deal with. I'm going to you take over.
57:22Yeah, sure. So I mean face is a good example of that and and there are technologies like invisible watermarking that we've developed and others that it's going to become an industry standard now that would allow if a government wanted to or and I think this will happen because it seems obvious that should be done you know so only that outlawing of that um but also making sure that any gen any model that generates media has to have watermarking as part of it and also a detection system that say government can have
57:51access to or journalists or you know eventually maybe the web should just automatically flag that up right if this is a this is a generated image seems like that's a to me a no regrets no-brainer thing to do um but look if as to June um which uh you know that's what could happen if things go wrong by the way I I've you know I've watched the film I've read so much sci-fi but I didn't read June maybe for this reason because it banned AI but there were many
58:19other you know so but I watched the the great movies and um you know we might not get the chance to recover that if AI was built wrong right I don't know how it resolved it in the June universe but um you know if things go badly wrong there may not be potential to kind of just walk that back so we got to get that right first time what I would say is in science fiction there are actually since we brought it up there are many great examples of universes where we humanity did get this right and you know
58:48we're kind of like maximum human flourishing to the stars so I would point to Ian Ian Banks as one of my favorite sci-fi novelists and the culture series and that is a depicts a kind of you know a future world maybe a thousand years from now where humanity's spread to the stars and they're also AIs as well but they sort of coexist in this um uh uh uh in this sort of largely peaceful way and and um complimentary
59:16way let's say and so that's just one there are many actually interesting visions of what that could be Like maybe we need more science fiction authors to to produce positive uh stories about the way it should go cuz actually a lot of science fiction does affect what scientists then think to do, right? I mean this is this has been proven through history. So I think uh we you know we when I speak to a science fiction author I tell them write some sort of hard sci-fi that shows some realistic view of like where we could get to or where we should be trying to
59:45aim for in the next 50 to 100 years. I think we need a big um creative explosion of ideas of what sorts of societies should we build assuming we get some of these things right like the technical aspects correct and then we might be in a post scarcity world but what does that mean you know how should we economics work in that in that sort of world if we solve fusion and material science and some you know root node problems I like to talk about teamwork I like to
1:00:13think about AI becoming part of teams so that you I think it will become we're at the it all seems to be happening so fast. It's not actually happening. I mean the technology might be moving on. Adoption is not happening anywhere near as fast.
1:00:28Y and um I think it's not that all the jobs are going to disappear. I'm not you know the Elon Musk no one will need to work uh rubbish. um the well I think it is anyway but the um jobs are going to change and I think we will get used to AI in the workplace it will replace I mean some of the grunge work which is done that people have to do um AI will do that and all the will be the better
1:00:57for it humans can we can be more creative but it will be take a you know when you're diagnosing someone's illness you still you need the human doctors but the AI will come along and say yeah this I can tell you from the data this you know of all the personalized medicine and you know it'll be it'll be a it'll be teamwork and as I said before I think m we have to recognize that machine intelligence and human intelligence
1:01:22different and that we um we we we should rejoice in that right and use it for the betterment of society and I guess in the olden times in se in the 60s and 70s people talked about computers in the came light I guess. Um well my I always use the example my father was an accountant. He finished his work and he ran a finance well not wasn't called finance. He ran an accounts department in a company and he
1:01:50um they did everything by hand. They had no calculators no computers. He could divide pound shense by pound spence in his head. It was all ledgers. They copied the ledgers all that's what they did. And that those jobs have all gone.
1:02:05But we've, you know, there are more jobs now in the finance industry because of the calculators and computers can do so much that human beings can't do. And this is what Demis said earlier. AI will do things or you said it. I think AI will do things we couldn't even dream of doing before. And we need to relish that opportunity. But we've got to alongside it get the safety and the guard rails and the whatever you want to call it sorted. And we can't sit back on our heels and assume someone else is going
1:02:34to do I've got to do it now.
1:02:37So part of our livery company is uh one of the uh pillars is charity and uh we have a question on charity which I think could be quite interesting. It's going to be uh the chair of the AI panel uh Paul Excel. A panel is like a committee which uh which helps members discuss improve etc. Paul.
1:03:03Uh, thank you, master. So, so my question is, uh, across our AI for charities community, we've got over now 90 charities who are doing some absolutely fantastic fundamental work using AI, unleashing real benefits to the communities they serve, but they're generally very concerned and worried. I mean, you've got very vulnerable people working in these uh uh that they're supporting in these communities. So given that we to your point we have a chance all of us to shape the future
1:03:32that we our children our grandchildren live in uh and where where would you say things like from a responsible AI ethics trust empathy safeguarding if it's fundamental to prevent harm and deliver positive impact what one to three responsible actions would you advocate to ask us as as homework everyone in this room governments civil society to ensure that the global
1:04:00solutions that both serve the needs of the society but al also can deliver uh security sustained growth opportunity for all all the good things almost like a goss maybe that's too much of a positive vision but surely it's possible us to grasp here in London and the UK it's quite a well it's quite a hard question to answer I'm just gonna I'm gonna Just start off by
1:04:27saying my number one would be diversity. I'm sorry but that is when I was asked somewhere what keeps you awake at night.
1:04:34It's not any of the things that I've Deis has been talking about or I hear the um it's it's the fact that we don't have enough we don't have diversity in this in this world and I think it's because of that it' be harder to be build an egalitarian world using AI if you haven't got diversity. And I I I'm looking I'm thinking at it through a gender lens, but I do mean diversity in its widest sense. I'm getting older.
1:05:00Well, we all are. That stupid tautology.
1:05:03I'm beginning to feel um you know there are things I can't do like I used to be able to do. And we we really need to think about um how we you know el the elderly like me in in the and are going to get the benefit of AI and you know school kids who have no no access to technology. Yeah, there's so many things where we we we've got to think we've got to try and create a level playing field for people
1:05:32and that's exactly where where my theme of community came out. Exactly what you've just been articulating.
1:05:40Well, we only came up with one. What's your top one's question?
1:05:43Well, it's a it's a tricky one. You know, I I I'm thinking mostly about what needs to happen at the the sort of global governance scale like which obviously will affect everything. Um, but I think the bottom up grassroots aspect is critical too in the way Wendy said, but we've touched on a lot of themes. Education, making sure people are reskilled. These are all community level things, right? That the the curriculum is updated. I've I've told you what I would do. You know, maybe you agree with that. Maybe there's some way
1:06:12you can influence that. I'm I'm not going to be a, you know, have time to do that, but someone should be doing that.
1:06:17So, um, depends what the interests are of your members. But um I think helping charities get up to speed on these things and take advantage actually of these tools, right? So um it should be great for a lot of things like back office things, stuff that charities have to do and spend money on so that they can spend their money and time on the on the on the um you know helping the the community people themselves, right? A lot of resources as I understand in charities, you know, to do with fundraising in the back office, but be better if it was frontline. So, I think
1:06:46that those things you we we're going to need both uh things and hopefully they'll converge, right? The the the sort of global governance scale with the frontier labs and the superpowers and then community scale and again maybe this is something we can lead the way on here in the UK.
1:07:02We have a civic project in Southampton um where we're taking um we talk about making a Southampton a an AI city of excellence but we're doing it from the grassroots up. So for example in the charity sector we we do popups actually I do pop-ups and we we take um some experts in a sector and we have a pop-up workshop and we invite people from so we have one for the charity sector and it's a sort of come along you know what was
1:07:30that Woody Allen film everything you want no was that no that wasn't I shouldn't do that go there was it um everything you wanted to know about AI but we're afraid to ask okay and um And seriously, so we encourage people to come who feel very vulnerable or frightened or scared and we talk to them as a community of say the of charity workers about and we get examples of best practice of people who are working
1:07:59in charities and they're using AI to spread the word and we've done that in three sectors now. We're doing more of it. Um it's it it's about awareness and education. Super. I have another question from uh Liverman Nicholas Bill. Nicholas, this is Thank you very much indeed both of you.
1:08:23Um we're going to have a situation I think in a few months time where all the western big AI developers are publicly listed companies with the responsibility to their investors and the big global investors are the only players that you know operate at the scale of trillions comparable to the um companies and they clearly have a big common interest in having none of their investments blow
1:08:52up. So I guess my question to both of you perhaps particularly Demis is what can the investors do to help encourage the responsible behavior because they may be able to help the game theoretic uh issue rather effectively.
1:09:10Yeah, I think that's a great uh point actually. So um I think that investors could exercise a lot more um influence than they probably do. I think the problem is it's so lucrative to get into those funding rounds um that you know they sort of the terms are basically there and it's take it or leave it as I understand it right and so and you can't really miss out because how many of these um uh rocket ship companies are
1:09:39well literally in one case but how many of them are there uh not that many right maybe just a handful and so um that's I think skews the balance a bit also a lot of them have unusual control structures obviously where in fact they're not beholden to the shareholders even when they float. So maybe but I mean look the average investor though just to be fair is mostly cares about their returns. So I don't know if that we want any, you know, even further just purely economic incentive. I think that's already part
1:10:07of the problem. Perhaps um there's some way around that and maybe when what I'm hoping is the market will self-correct a bit in the agentic era because if you imagine that one of the leading frontier model labs wants to provide agents for uh a financial service company for example, I would imagine the financial service companies will want some guarantees around the guard rails around those agents. what they'll do, what they'll do with their client data. You know, you can't have one of them putting a trade on that you loses you a billion
1:10:37dollars the next day because of some uh uh misspecified goal function. So what I suspect will happen is maybe uh some sort of error like that will happen uh with the companies that are providing things without the right guardrails and then those the market will do its the correct thing and incentivize actually um uh uh uh responsible behavior especially in the regulated industries which are also somewhat the most valuable. So I think it could be good
1:11:06actually. That's the kind of silver lining with with these technologies becoming more commercially useful and viable especially in enterprise which is what we're seeing now kind of for the first time. We sort of saw the consumer part of it but there's also now enterprise and that may actually then line up incentives in a way that's actually really good for responsible deployment. So that's I think pretty likely to happen actually and I think investors could uh and also enterprises
1:11:35that are you know CTO's and CIOS of of big banks and other companies. You should be using your power and your purchasing power to support providers. Obviously you're not going to compromise on quality but support providers that you believe are acting responsibly.
1:11:51That's what you can do. And I also say that to the average person in the street even as like well even as a consumer you could vote with your your your dollars and vote with your feet in terms of and use the market forces for good to put pressure to to support companies and and and labs that are doing things in ways uh and with leaders that that maybe reflect the values that you would like to see in the world. And I think as these systems become more commercial I hope that's what investors and
1:12:19enterprises will do. I think it could be tied too to whatever organization we collectively managed to set up to do governance of AI um across the world because you could I don't know if charter or treaties or whatever will come out of that and the investors could say if your company doesn't sign up to this then we're not going to invest in you for example I'm going to go to one last question and this question is from the cell style
1:12:48oldest analyst in the UK liver man, Richard Hallway.
1:12:52Um yes indeed. Um yesterday I wrote an article celebrating um computer center entering the Footsie 100, only the second tech company to be there. Indeed, in the um list of the top 100 um tech companies by market capitalization, um the UK only has one and that is ARM and that is actually listed on NASDAQ. Now, if Deep Mind had actually gone on for an IPO, I guarantee that you would
1:13:22currently be in the Footsie 100. In fact, you might even be leading it. And and and indeed, um you might have acted as a catalyst to many other UK companies to follow the same route and you would have built the infrastructure and ecosystem around it just as they have in Silicon Valley and whatever. And I wonder what your views were about that. I think everybody knows what mine are.
1:13:45Well, the alternate history. Yes, sure.
1:13:47Well, look, you you you I don't know where where you were in 2014. I don't know if you would have backed us with several billion dollars back then. Maybe you would have done, but um I couldn't find So, back in 2014, which is another world in AI terms. We were still the only people doing it. This is before Open AI was set up, before we done Alph Go, we just had the Atari games, you know, and people were like, "What is, you know, you're playing Space Invaders.
1:14:11Why is that important?" And but you know Google understood the importance of that to be clear. Larry Page specifically, right? So I give him a lot of credit on that because he himself always was interested in AI. He saw Google as an AI company. The reason I sold was I knew it would require $7 billion of investment in order to take on try and become one of those companies. And I was barely be able to scrape together $10 million rounds at that point. And the problem was is that we' done enough the Atari
1:14:38thing had alerted enough of the Silicon Valley titans. They were coming after my people. So if I had to find and we had no business. We didn't even have a product. Obviously not cuz I was trying to make the core technology. And so that thing I was telling you is I was paying I was paying myself zero and people were being paid like you know 100k a year and then they were getting offers of 10 million a year. So I could sort of I was sort of thinking and then they could if that didn't work what they could they could afford to come back and say here's
1:15:0750 million a year. So at some point that was going to go wrong and at the time this was before Soft Bank and some of the big VCs had were doing billion dollar rounds. I was slightly out I was slightly unlucky with the timing because if if I if I maybe if we'd held on 2015 16 I could have done a fundraising round like that. um wouldn't have been British investors unfortunately but I could have got it from some of the more out there uh investors uh that had the firepower but that just wasn't available in 2014
1:15:36but the other reason that I don't regret it is I wanted to get back to the research and the science and you it's very hard to do two like fund raise for a startup worry about product and then do something like alpha go and alpha fold I would never so I don't regret it for a moment because I want I always for me it was always about the research and the technology ology and what it could do rather than the money or the power and the things like that. I appreciate it would be better for Britain but but but but maybe for my bank balance but I
1:16:04wouldn't swap my Nobel for example for any amount of money you could give me literally any amount so you know and the what I've seen 3 million researchers around the world have used alphafold in their important um biomedical research you know a farmer uh leading farmer friend of mine said there won't be you know there probably won't be a drug invented in the future that hasn't used alpha fold somewhere in their process so I'm very proud of that I think it's something built here in Britain. I think we should be proud of that scientific
1:16:33fact. And uh look, who knows? Maybe I'll complete the job with isomorphic.
1:16:39That's kind of part of the plan, right?
1:16:41Head fully headquartered here. And um but we need to fix whatever the problem is with the stock exchange right now.
1:16:47Why are companies not floating on there?
1:16:49I don't know what. Yeah. So, we need to fix that. I'll come to you in a few years time and we can talk about it.
1:16:55So I I just I'd like to just say in praise of Demis that I think the UK's done hugely well out of what Demis has done. Um it's obvious and I don't think we should explore the parallel or the alternate you because the UK benefits from what you've done with Deep Mind and I go to California. I go I'm out there next week. I go to Google and we ride high in California because of this man.
1:17:20Right. Um, and you're starting out in Southeast Asia now. Yeah.
1:17:25And also, I mean, you got you got billions of dollars of investment have come into the UK because of this partnership, right? And high power jobs and talent and other things.
1:17:35But what's actually um emerging is that the whilst it feels like all the companies and they're all doing the same sort of technology, they're actually emerging as different types of players.
1:17:46I've always said this. you know that um you see well I don't know what's happening to open AI but the the Microsoft you know we're getting all that through our through just using office and anthropics got its particular specialtities and we're going to see this type so I don't like to make it I've my my money has always been on Google with or without Demis because I like their values they and and they've had the search engine they've got you know the data and it's all I love Gemini
1:18:14actually it's my fave and uh It's always been where my money is. But and I'm not just saying it because I'm sitting next to Dumbus. It's um but um you know we it isn't a race that there'll be one winner of actually. Um and it will there will be many different types of of AI companies that emerge. I find that whole thing really exciting what we're going to do with it.
1:18:39Well, before I say my thanks, I'd just like to invite uh Emily Turner, CEO of HSBC Innovation Banking, for a last few words.
1:18:50We've got to thank you for the power banks, have we?
1:18:52Thank you. I'm an academic. I'll always take a freebie.
1:18:57Well, if you want more merch, I think we have some in the back. So, can can work that out. Uh please join me in thanking um our esteemed panelists today for what was an amazing discussion. So sir Demis and Dwendy thank you so much.
1:19:23I obviously also want to thank the worshipful company of information technologists for hosting us today. Um I'm sure everyone like me felt the great juxosition of coming into a beautiful building like this and the history of the organization along with the topic today and I you know just an amazing piece. Um for those of you who don't know us just very quickly um HSBC Innovation Banking we are a UK purpose-built bank to serve the innovation economy. We work with 4,000 innovators, entrepreneurs and investors
1:19:52in this country. And you know, as everyone talked about today, as everyone here knows, this is an amazing time to work in the innovation economy and importantly in the UK where we have the confluence of talent, of diversity of thinking, of diversity of domains and expertise as Demis mentioned, of ambition as as you clearly articulated um and it's an amazing moment. In the first quarter alone, 74% of VC dollars in this country went into AI companies, which is a massive increase on just a
1:20:21few years ago. Um I know there was the sort of theoretical question on what would have happened if DeepMind had stayed here. I will call out that over 10% of the funding in the first quarter alone came from companies in the UK started by people who left deep mind. So I think the story of Deep Mind and its in importance on this economy and will the next not just unicorn but decacorn come here probably will have its fingerprints linked to deep mind. So just wanted to call that out. um
1:20:50certainly for me but I'm sure for everyone else here it's been amazing to be part of the discussion today to hear from people who got us to where we are today in this space but importantly are playing such a huge role all three of you and where we go tomorrow. So please join us for drinks. Let's continue the discussion um and if you didn't have questions answered um hopefully people will be around to continue it then. So thank you all and thank you to our panelists.
1:21:21So all that remains for me to say Liverman Sir Deis Havis and Liverman De Wendy Hall I hope this is not not the last time we see you in our in our company and our livery but please do free feel free to join us at any of our events. You'll be more than welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, can I ask you one more time to give Sadis Deendi a big take up? Always fun.