At first glance, Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of the DeepMind AI lab, seems a familiar type: the missionary entrepreneur and out-of-the-box scientist who emerges as the right person for a particular moment. In this case, that moment was when hardware and software and data aligned to make superintelligence possible. But Hassabis is hardly a conventional figure. He has devoted his life to creating a technology that he thinks has the potential to destroy the world. Hassabis agreed to talk with me