Project Mario: the inside story of DeepMind (colossus.com) AI

An excerpt from Sebastian Mallaby’s book describes how DeepMind co-founders Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman tried to build AI safety governance inside Google, beginning after a failed 2015 oversight board meeting involving Elon Musk. Their “Project Mario” talks with Google and Alphabet aimed to create a semi-independent structure with a 3-3-3 board, but internal resistance from Google leadership derailed a hoped-for spin-out and pushed them toward a potential $5 billion outside-investor “walk away” plan framed as serving the public interest.