Demis Hassabis, from chess prodigy to Nobel-winning AI pioneer [Video]

Long before Demis Hassabis pioneered artificial intelligence techniques to earn a Nobel prize, he was a master of board games.

The London-born son of a Greek-Cypriot father and a Singaporean mother started playing chess when he was just four, rising to the rank of master at 13.

“That’s what got me into AI in the first place, playing chess from a young age and thinking and trying to improve my own thought processes,” the 48-year-old told journalists after sharing the Nobel prize in chemistry with two other scientists on Wednesday.

It was the second Nobel award in as many days involving artificial intelligence (AI), and Hassabis followed Tuesday’s chemistry laureates in warning that the technology they had championed can also “be used for harm”.

But rather than doom and gloom warnings of AI apocalypse, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind lab described himself as a “cautious optimist”.

“I’ve worked on this …