DeepMind CEO says artificial general intelligence will be bigger than electricity or fire

For the second time this year, Demis Hassabis has predicted the arrival of artificial general intelligence before the end of the decade. However, this time he said this would not be just another technological breakthrough, but would rival the discovery of electricity or fire.

In a Blog post Published Tuesday on X, Google’s DeepMind CEO said that artificial general intelligence “may only be a few years away,” describing it as a technology that could reshape human civilization.

“When we look back on this time in the coming decades, I believe we will realize that we were standing on the slopes of the singularity — nothing less than the dawn of a new age for humanity.”

According to Hasbabis. General artificial intelligenceThe point at which computers can understand, learn, and perform a wide range of tasks as well as or better than humans should not be compared to advances such as the Internet or mobile computing because their impact may be greater.

“It is akin to the discovery of electricity or fire,” he wrote. “If you stop thinking about it, we’ve found a way to make sand think. It’s a miracle.”

Despite this optimism, Hassabis warned that AI capabilities are advancing faster than society’s ability to understand and manage risks, noting cybersecurity threats already exist with current border models, adding that future systems could give rise to biological, nuclear and other national security risks.

As artificial intelligence becomes more effective and capable of self-improvement, stronger technical safeguards will be needed to ensure humans stay in control, he said.

“On the horizon, we will need strong safeguards to maintain control over increasingly effective and iterative systems of self-improvement – ​​and to address unknown issues that will become clearer over time.”

This news comes as AI leaders have spent much of the past year since ChatGPT’s public launch in 2022 warning that AGI may arrive sooner than expected. In January 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Human level AI could emerge within one to five years, and he warned that governments are underestimating the pace of development. Then in June Hassabis anticipation Artificial general intelligence will arrive by 2030, and he warned that society “does not have long to prepare.”

To address these concerns, Hassabis proposed creating a frontier AI standards body in the United States modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, a private organization that oversees American financial brokerage firms. The federally supervised public-private partnership will be funded primarily by the AI ​​industry and staffed by independent, open-source technical experts to evaluate frontier AI models.

“The rapid progress we are seeing in AI requires a new approach to testing the capabilities of frontier AI models that are dynamic, adaptable, and rigorous,” he wrote. The United States is well positioned, given its economic and technical standing, to take the first step in developing such a framework.

The proposal follows similar calls by prominent members of the industry to establish oversight of advanced artificial intelligence.

In May 2023, during a hearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Named A federal agency has to license powerful AI systems and requires independent safety audits. More recently, last month, President Donald Trump signed an agreement Executive order Establish a voluntary framework to review advanced AI models before they are released. In the same month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to caution That artificial intelligence has become too powerful and that FAA-like safety rules are needed.

Despite the push to regulate AI development, Hassabis said the world has only a limited window to establish common standards before AGI arrives.

“The future is not yet written, and we must use this precious window before the arrival of artificial general intelligence to shape this technology for the benefit of all humanity,” he wrote. “What we collectively do now will determine how the next phase of civilization unfolds. By safely guiding artificial general intelligence into the world, we can usher in a new golden age of scientific discovery and progress, and usher in a bright future of astonishing human prosperity.”