Sir Demis Hassabis vs Sir Demis Hassabis

Two AI Timelines

Aat Stanford earlier this week (following up his Google IO talk of about ten days ago), Sir Demis Hassabis, Nobel Laureate put a tight window around AGI:

I believe that we’re only a few years away from that, maybe like 2030 plus or minus a year, which is astounding to think, really.” [@ 27:09]

Which is funny, because Sir Demis Hassabis [let’s call him Sir Demis Hassabis #2] , just a few months earlier in January 2026 at Davos, had something rather different to say, anticipating a somewhat slower timeline of 2031-2036:

Per the YouTube transcription at 6:26, Alex Kantrowitz asks Hassabis, “We’ve brought up AGI a couple times. Um so let me let me put this to you because I was speaking with Sam Alman towards the end of the year and I asked him l was like you know you seem to be saying two things. We’re not at AGI yet, but every time he talks about what GPT models can do, it seems like it fits his definition. And he said uh a that AGI is underdefined. And what he wishes everybody could agree to was that we’ve sort of whooshed by AGI and we move towards super intelligence. Do you agree with that?

Here is reply, boldfacing his definition of AGI which I share:

I’m sure he does wish that, but it’s um No, absolutely not. I don’t think AGI should be sort of turned into a marketing term or for commercial gain. I think there is always been a scientific definition of that. My definition of that is a system that an exhibit all the cognitive capabilities humans can and I mean all.

So that means you know the kind of highest levels of human creativity that we always celebrate the scientists and the artists that we admire. So it means you know not just solving a maths equation or a conjecture but coming up with a breakthrough conjecture that’s much harder you know not solving something in physics or some bit of chemistry problem even like alpha fold you know protein folding but actually coming up with a new theory of physics something like like Einstein did with general relativity right can a system come up with that because of course we can do that the smartest uh humans with their brain architectures have been able to do that in history and the same on the art side you know not just create a pastiche of what’s known but actually be Picasso or Mozart and create a completely new genre of art that we had never seen before right

Aand today’s systems in my opinion are nowhere near nowhere near that doesn’t matter how many you know Erdos problems you solve which for some reason. Uou know I mean you know that it’s good that we’re doing those things but | think it’s far far from what you know a true invention or someone like a ramen would have been able to do and you need to.

And you need to have a system that can potentially do that across all these domains. And then on top of that, I’d add in physical intelligence because of course, you know, we can play sports and control our bodies and to amazing levels, the elite sports people that are walking around, you know. here today in Davos. And we’re still way off of that on robotics as another example.

So l think an AGI system would have to be able to do all of those thingsto really fulfill the the the original sort of goal of of the Al field. And I think, you know, we’re 5 to 10 years away from that.

I am 100% with the more conservative Sir Demis Hassabis #2.

We won’t see AGI this decade, and we not even close, exactly for the reasons that he laid out.