Google’s Chess Master Is Working on AI's Killer App

You may have only recently heard about Demis Hassabis. He’s been named one of Time magazine’s “AI architects,” won a Nobel Prize for using the technology to predict protein folding and runs Google’s AI efforts. When the search giant acquired his company DeepMind in 2014, he embraced his new employer’s vast resources to build machines that surpassed human brainpower, so-called artificial general intelligence.

His biggest achievements since then have been to give Google the glow of scientific prestige, with AI systems that beat the world’s top Go players and that Nobel Prize for chemistry. A product breakthrough has long eluded Hassabis, but that could change in 2026 if his unconventional ideas make their way into Google’s second attempt at smart glasses, the kind of development that could mark a full turnaround for a company that was caught on the back foot three years ago by ChatGPT.