Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World

by Cade Metz

But by the ’90s, when Cyc showed little sign of real progress, the idea of rebuilding human intelligence was not something the leading researchers talked about, at least not in public, and that remained true for the next two decades. In 2008, Shane Legg said as much in his PhD thesis. “Among researchers the topic is almost taboo:4 it belongs in science fiction. The most intelligent computer in the world, they assure the public, is perhaps as smart as an ant, and that’s on a good day. True machine intelligence, if it is ever developed, lies in the distant future,” he wrote. “Perhaps over the next few years these ideas will become more mainstream, however for now they are at the fringe. Most researchers remain very sceptical about the idea of truly intelligent machines within their lifetime.” Over the next few years, such ideas did become more mainstream, and this was largely thanks to Shane Legg, who went on to build DeepMind alongside Demis Hassabis, and who, with Hassabis, convinced three significant figures (Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Larry Page) that the research was worth investing in. After Google acquired DeepMind, Legg continued to argue in private that superintelligence was nigh, but he rarely spoke about it in public, in part because people like Musk were intent on stoking concerns that intelligent machines could destroy the world. But in spite of his reticence, his ideas continued to spread.