In November of 2022, Sebastian Mallaby sat down with Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, to discuss the broad approach to the book Mallaby intended to write, a profile of both Hassabis and the current state of AI technology, with all its seemingly limitless potential and its risks. Hassabis, whose startup had been acquired by Google, was the leading voice on AI research and application and the meeting was the first of dozens that would ultimately inform the book.