Thursday, April 30, 2026

AI / AGI = 3 / 4 ?

 Demis Hassabis: We're Three Quarters of the Way to AGI - YouTube

In this conversation, Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, discusses his vision for the future of AI and science. Here are the key takeaways:

  • The Path to AGI: Hassabis maintains that AGI remains a realistic goal for 2030, a target he has consistently projected for years.
  • AI for Science: The primary mission of DeepMind has always been using AI as a tool to accelerate scientific discovery. He highlights AlphaFold as a major breakthrough that successfully tackled a long-standing grand challenge in biology.
  • Revolutionizing Drug Discovery: By leveraging AI in biochemistry and chemistry—specifically through Isomorphic Labs—the goal is to move the majority of the drug discovery process into a simulated environment, potentially reducing development timelines from years to days.
  • The Role of Simulations: He argues that AI-driven simulations offer a way to study emergent systems—like biology, economics, and climate—in ways that traditional mathematics or isolated experiments cannot.
  • Information as Fundamental: Hassabis proposes a philosophical perspective that information is the most fundamental substance in the universe, suggesting that AI's ability to process and organize information is profoundly significant.
  • Philosophy and Science: He draws inspiration from philosophers like Kant and Spinoza, viewing his work in AI and science as a means to understand the nature of reality and the human mind.

Simpler code with early returns: "Guard Clauses"

This is how "ideomatic Go" (or any other code) should like, simpler.

Guard Clauses: Simplifying Code with Early Returns | by Vaibhav Mojidra | Medium

Guard clauses (or early returns) are conditional statements placed at the beginning of a function that exit early if specific conditions are not met, reducing nested if-else structures. They improve readability by separating error handling and validations from the main logic

JS

function
getMemberDiscount(member) { if (member) { if (member.isPremium) { return "20% off"; } else { return "10% off"; } } else { return "No discount"; } }

=>
function getMemberDiscount(member) {
  // Guard clauses
  if (!member) return "No discount";
  if (!member.isPremium) return "10% off";
  // Main logic (no nesting)
  return "20% off";
}

In modern programming languages like C#, Java, and Dart, guard clauses can be used within switch expressions to add additional conditions to a pattern match. These are often called case guards or when clauses.