Inside the mind solving intelligence & a diary of a Bhutan trip
The prologue of the current AI boom is the story of Demis Hassabis and DeepMind, the lab that arguably kickstarted the modern AI revolution. This awesome documentary tells it all, following Hassabis from his days as a child chess prodigy to a video game designer at 17, and finally to the founder of a startup with a mission statement so audacious it sounded like a joke: “Solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else”. The documentary captures their many moments that changed the world, like AlphaGo’s move 37 in the match against Lee Sedol, a move so creative that human commentators thought it was a mistake. Or the journey to solve protein folding, a 50-year-old biological challenge, when after years of failure and skepticism, the moment the team realizes AlphaFold has cracked it is genuinely moving (potentially unlocking cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s). But what really sticks is the philosophy, as Hassabis argues that AI isn’t just a tool for better ads but the ultimate scientific instrument. He sees AGI as a way to plug in 300 Einsteins to solve problems that are too complex for unassisted human brains.
We all have a list of mythical travel destinations we swear we’ll visit someday when the stars align. I’m guilty of having a list more unusual than average, having gone to places like Antarctica and Easter Island, and wanting to go to others like Svalbard, Alaska and Falklands/Islas Malvinas (ok, Alaska is going to be crossed from the list next year). For Tim Urban from Wait But Why, one of those places was Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan kingdom famous for prioritizing “Gross National Happiness” over GDP. In this travelogue (complemented by this video), he describes a place that feels less like a country and more like a real-life Shangri-La. The country is unique and squashed between China and India, somehow remaining independent and culturally protected. It’s the world’s last Buddhist kingdom, where the King seems genuinely beloved. However, it’s not all fairy tales. The country is facing a brain drain as young people leave for opportunities abroad. The King is planning to fix this through Gelephu Mindfulness City, a proposed economic hub designed to blend innovation with tradition. I’m not sure if Bhutan made it to my personal list even after reading about it, but it sure slightly sparked my curiosity.