Black & White Co-Founder Awarded Nobel Prize. Demis Hassabis Accomplished Great Thing
One of the former creators of Black & White has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Demis Hassabis and his team have developed an AI tool for predicting protein structures.
Professor Demis Hassabis previously worked at Bullfrog Productions and Lionhead, where he was the Lead AI Programmer for Black & White. Over time, however, he decided to focus on science and research. He is currently a co-founder of DeepMind, and yesterday, alongside professors John Jumper and David Baker, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Hassabis and Jumper are responsible for developing the AI tool AlphaFold2, which is used for predicting protein structures. This is his second iteration - the first one was made available to researchers in 2018. This may saw the announcement of its third iteration. A press release from the Norwegian Nobel Institute said AlphaFold2 was used “to predict the structure of virtually all of the 200 million proteins that scientists have identified.”
AlphaFold2 has been used by over 2 million people from 190 countries. Among its countless applications, scientists can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can break down plastic.
As claimed by Hassabis himself, his passion for AI started with video games and how they are created. He mentioned that he was specifically interested in a computer playing chess, which led him to delve into this topic.
Many children start with playing games, just like I did, then move on to programming, and later use this amazing tool, which is a computer, to create things.
DeepMind also initially used video games. Their AI was trained on titles such as Breakout and Pong, but over time, more complex productions like Starcraft 2 were used. It was only around 2016, when the company had this stage behind it, that it focused on proteins and the AlphaFold tool.
