Interview: Human brain is entirely 'computable' -- AlphaGo developer Hassabis- Nikkei Asian Review

According to Demis Hassabis, the founder of the leading artificial intelligence company DeepMind, intelligence is computational and computers can replicate it. Hassabis sees this as an incredible tool, like having the world's best research assistant at your fingertips. Where this leads -- solving humanity's greatest challenges or the possibility of AI being used by people with ill intent -- is part of a wide-ranging conversation Hassabis had with The Nikkei on the sidelines of the Future of Go summit held on May 23-27 in Wuzhen, China. Excerpts from the interview follow. Q: You've demonstrated how powerful the combination of deep learning and reinforcement learning is, and based on that, AI can be better than humans in a narrow domain like the game of Go. But how far along are you in terms of fundamentally understanding what intelligence is, and its processes and its mechanisms?