Shane Legg
Shane Legg is a New Zealand–born artificial intelligence researcher who co-founded DeepMindGoogle DeepMindGoogle DeepMind is Google’s artificial intelligence research organization, formed in April 2023 by merging DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, with the Brain team from Google Research, and led by CEO Demis Hassabis. It developed AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and the Gemini family of models, and Hassabis and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction work.Open the full entry with Demis Hassabis in 2010 and is chief AGI scientist at Google DeepMind, with long-standing work on the theory of machine intelligence and the safety of artificial general intelligence.
Contents9 sections
Key facts
March 1997Report on Solomonoff Induction
In March 1997, listed as an author from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Auckland, he published a report titled “Solomonoff Induction” in the research report series of the university’s Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (CDMTCS).[1]
2003–2008Doctoral Studies in Switzerland
According to a 2010 seminar listing by the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, he is a native of New Zealand who, after training in mathematics, worked as a software engineer mostly for American artificial intelligence companies, and returned to academia in 2003 to pursue a PhD.[2]
He received his PhD in 2008 from the Department of Informatics at the University of Lugano in Switzerland under Marcus Hutter, originator of the AIXI model, with a thesis titled “Machine Super Intelligence”; after completing it he won the $10,000 Canadian Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Prize and a postdoctoral grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.[2]
2010Co-Founding DeepMind
As of March 2010, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London.[2]
According to TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry, he met Demis Hassabis while a postdoctoral researcher at University College London, and the two founded DeepMind in 2010 with the aim of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI); he served as the company’s chief scientist from its founding.[3]
From 2019: Leading the AGI Technical Safety Team
TIME reported that in 2019 he recruited his doctoral supervisor Marcus Hutter to join DeepMind as a senior research scientist, and that he has since led DeepMind’s AGI technical safety team.[3]
2023Becoming Chief AGI Scientist at Google DeepMind
After DeepMind merged with Google Brain in April 2023 to form Google DeepMind, he became chief AGI scientist; in September of that year he was named to TIME’s TIME100 AI list. The profile noted that more than two decades earlier, while working as a software engineer, he had estimated a 50% chance that human-level machine intelligence would be created by 2028.[3]
November 2023Co-Authoring the “Levels of AGI” Framework
On November 4, 2023, he and Google DeepMind researchers including Meredith Ringel Morris posted a paper on arXiv proposing a framework that classifies AGI models and their precursors by levels of performance, generality and autonomy, to compare models, assess risks and measure progress.[4]
April 2, 2025Co-Authoring Google DeepMind’s Post on a Responsible Path to AGI
On April 2, 2025, Google DeepMind’s official blog published “Taking a responsible path to AGI,” bylined by Anca Dragan, Rohin Shah, Four Flynn and him; the post identified him as the company’s co-founder and chief AGI scientist.[5]
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Google DeepMind: Official website: https://deepmind.google/ (opens in a new window)[6]
Google DeepMind: Official account: https://x.com/googledeepmind (opens in a new window)[6]
Sources
- Solomonoff Induction (opens in a new window)
- Seminar: Dr Shane Legg - What can the architecture of the brain teach us about artificial intelligence? (opens in a new window)
- Shane Legg (opens in a new window)
- Levels of AGI for Operationalizing Progress on the Path to AGI (opens in a new window)
- Taking a responsible path to AGI (opens in a new window)
- About Google DeepMind (opens in a new window)