Demis Hassabis: the deep mind Dominic Cummings turned to as the pandemic hit

The AI researcher and co-founder of Google's DeepMind was one of many who pressed for an hard lockdown in March 2020

At first glance, Demis Hassabis is an unusual figure for Dominic Cummings to have turned to for guidance in March 2020 about the threat of the novel coronavirus bearing down on the UK.

The co-founder of Google subsidiary DeepMind, which is dedicated to high-level AI research, has a varied CV, but is no epidemiologist. A child chess prodigy, he hit the rank of master at 13 and was for a brief time the second-highest-rated player in the world in his age category.