DeepMind Wants Graduates Who Keep Learning Beyond Class

Your daily brief on leadership and business

Google DeepMind is giving more weight to what graduate applicants have learned outside the classroom, according to Lila Ibrahim, the lab's chief AI readiness officer. She spoke at a media lunch in September.

Degrees still matter for researchers, engineers and other roles, Ibrahim said, but there has been a shift toward placing greater weight on extra credentials and experience on a candidate's résumé.

"One credential will tell me what you've learned, but multiple credentials tell me that you have a learning mindset," she said. Looking at new graduates' résumés and CVs, she added, she finds them very different from what she remembers from her own generation: they often show more detail about what the candidate studied outside formal education. At DeepMind that detail can reveal whether someone is curious and "preset to a life of lifelong learning."

Good questions over quick answers

Ibrahim named asking questions as a skill for an AI-powered workplace and said schools do not teach it well. "Getting answers is super cheap these days, but actually knowing how to ask really good questions is getting harder and harder," she said. Her summary of what DeepMind wants from applicants: "Curiosity, courage to take on something completely new that is unpredictable, and the ability to work in a dynamic environment and to be able to collaborate with people."

The lab looks for interdisciplinary people who work well with others. Ibrahim said having "the neuroscientist, alongside the ethicist, alongside the biologist" has helped with some of DeepMind's technical breakthroughs. The lab has hired numerous philosophers, she said, but "you need to pair them with operators to turn those ideas into action." Founder Demis Hassabis has said that STEM and computer science remain important while an AI world also needs the humanities, such as philosophy, economics and ethics. "I think we really need them in the world we're about to enter," he said at a London business conference in July.

Finding such skills in the UK has not been a challenge so far, Ibrahim said. Compared with her 30 years in Silicon Valley, she sees more diverse talent in Britain, where she described a strong appreciation for philosophy, political science and similar disciplines.

Ibrahim was previously DeepMind's chief operating officer, a post she held from 2018. At the start of 2026 she became chief AI readiness officer, a role she said she created to address a widening gap between the technology being built and society's readiness to receive it.

A recent study of more than 300 million registered learners on Coursera and Udemy found that companies' AI deployment is outpacing the skills people need to use it well. Nearly 75% of organizations have deployed or are piloting the technology, but only 18% reported that most of their workforce took part in AI upskilling or reskilling over the past year.

Source: Business Insider