Demis Hassabis, and how AI just might wrangle our molecular universe

It was a brisk October night as Demis Hassabis and I talked about the stars.

There was good reason. For one, place: We were sitting in a London observatory opened in 1929. For another, metaphor: Talking about stars and constellations is a great way to talk about vastness, the wonders and limitations of what the human brain can process. 

There’s vastness far closer to us that transcends even the stars. It may seem impossible but there are, in fact, more possible chemical compounds in our world than stars across the sky.