Hassabis Brings AGI Timeline to Two or Three Years and Proposes Oversight

Demis Hassabis now puts the timeline for AGI at two to three years and advocates for a public oversight body for model evaluation. He clarifies his definition of AGI and the test that guides its assessment, while redirecting his efforts towards Isomorphic Labs.

Proposed Public Oversight Body for Model Evaluation

Demis Hassabis proposes the creation of an oversight board funded by the industry and under government control, tasked with evaluating models before their release. He believes that poor regulation would be worse than no regulation at all. Since leaving Google DeepMind, he has been focused on Isomorphic Labs, Google's subsidiary dedicated to drug discovery.

An Extensive Definition and an "Einstein Test"

According to Demis Hassabis, AGI is defined as a system capable of encompassing all cognitive abilities of the human brain. He uses the "Einstein Test" as a methodological reference: it assesses whether a system, trained exclusively on information from before 1901, would be able to write Albert Einstein's publications from 1905.

A Narrowed Horizon of Two to Three Years and a Colossal Impact

Demis Hassabis now believes that AGI could arrive in two to three years, whereas he previously mentioned three to five years earlier this year. He stated to the Wall Street Journal that this deadline "is coming soon" and that his estimate is getting closer to the present. He compares the impact of AGI to "ten times the industrial revolution at ten times the speed." Demis Hassabis is the founder of Google DeepMind and is presented as a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry.