Google AI CEO Demis Hassabis on why he refused to move to Silicon Valley from London after DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014: I wanted to show that …

Google AI CEO Demis Hassabi has revealed why he chose to stay in London instead of moving to Silicon Valley after Google acquired DeepMind in 2014. Speaking at an event in London hosted by Intelligence Squared, Hassabis said that he chose to stay because wanted to prove that world-class AI work could happen outside the US. “There’s a bit of an underdog in me,” Demis Hassabis said adding “I wanted to show that I’m passionate about the U.K. and that London and the U.K. could do this. But the main thing was: I knew there was the talent here”. Continuing further, he said “I knew we would have the field to ourselves for about four or five years, the formative years of DeepMind, and we had this incredible talent that was being overlooked in the U.S.”