Friends from the old neighborhood become rivals in Big Tech's AI race
Mustafa Suleyman grew up in subsidized housing in one of London's roughest areas. His father, a Syrian immigrant, drove a taxi. His mother was a nurse in the National Health Service. When the prestigious Queen Elizabeth's School accepted him at age 11, the family moved to a safer, leafier neighborhood a few miles north.There he met 20-year-old Demis Hassabis, after becoming friends with his younger brother. Demis was a chess prodigy and video game designer whose parents - one Greek Cypriot, the other Singaporean - ran a toy shop in London.Today they are two of the most powerful executives in the tech industry's race to build artificial intelligence. Dr Hassabis, 47, is the CEO of Google DeepMind, the tech giant's central research laboratory for artificial intelligence....