Demis HassambisCEO and one of the three founders of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary DeepMind, he has was awarded Knighted in the United Kingdom for “services to artificial intelligence”.
Ian Hogarthpresident of the recently launched UK government AI Safety Institute and previously founder of music startup Songkick, was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to artificial intelligence. the way it was Matt Cliffordan AI advisor to the UK government and co-founder of ultra-seed investor Entrepreneur First.
Miracle
Hassabis was born in London in 1976, emerging prodigy in various disciplines and arrived main state in chess when he was a teenager. He then went on to become a lead developer at the legendary UK video game development company Bullfrog Productions; graduated from the University of Cambridge with honors in Computer Science. and worked in various artificial intelligence and computer science roles before obtaining a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London (UCL).
Alongside Shane Legg and Mustafa SuleimanHired by Microsoft from AI startup Inflection AI last week, Hassabis founded DeepMind out of London in 2010.
Hassabis awarded a CBE in 2017 for “services to science and technology” in the wake of a number of high-profile achievements at DeepMind — this included developing an AI system that beat the world champion of the strategy board game Go. However, the company also courted controversy after signing data sharing agreements with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Fast-forward seven years, and it’s telling that his knighthood was specifically awarded for services to “artificial intelligence,” a field that has exploded into mainstream consciousness in the past 18 months due to technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The UK has been eager to place itself at the forefront of the AI revolution, led by initiatives such as the AI Security Summit it hosted in England last November. And he sits between the top AI countries worldwide in terms of R&D investment, behind the US and China, with DeepMind serving as one of the UK’s biggest AI exports. After acquiring DeepMind in 2014 for $500 million, it has emerged as one of Google’s most critical assets as the big tech companies battle it out for AI dominance — along with Google Research, DeepMind is responsible for Gemini, Google’s rival to OpenAI’s GPT-branded family of large language models.
So it makes sense that the UK would seek to honor one of AI’s most high-profile figures. Other notable tech figures to receive knighthoods include Apple’s Jonathan “Jony” Ive in 2011 for “services to design and business”.
In past centuries, knighthoods were usually reserved for military achievements, but today they are usually awarded for services and achievements of national importance – which could be contributions to science, sport, entertainment and technology. Knighthood is usually proposed by the prime minister, the government department, members of parliament or even members of the public, with the head of state—that is, the king or queen at the time—technically making the final decision on who welcomes them.
The recipient receives no substantive privilege on the back of their knighthood, but receives the cultural and social credit associated with being allowed to prefix their name with the prefix “Lord.”
