Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis disagrees with company’s co-founder Sergey Brin on this one thing: 'We thought it was...'

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis holds a more cautious outlook on the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) than the Alphabet-owned company's co-founder Sergey Brin. Currently, AGI’s definition is contested, with some focusing on human-level competence across all domains and others on an AI’s capacity to learn, adapt and produce autonomous outputs beyond its training data. Despite both having access to similar data and insights into AI development, Hassabis' perspective differs from Brin's. In a recent conversation on the New York Times' Hard Fork podcast, it was noted that Brin expects AGI to arrive before 2030, while Hassabis has predicted that it will happen just after 2030. This difference in forecasts raises questions about how these Google executives may be perceiving differently from the same information. Hassabis also stated that he is sticking to a timeline he has maintained since DeepMind was founded in 2010.Talking at the NYT podcast, Hassabis said: “We thought it was roughly a 20-year mission, and amazingly, we're on track. It's somewhere around there, I would think.”The prediction came after Brin jokingly accused Hassabis of “sandbagging”, which is intentionally downplaying timelines to later overdeliver. However, during the interview, Hassabis stood by his reasoning, pointing to the complexity of defining AGI itself."I have quite a high bar. It should be able to do all of the things that the human brain can do, even theoretically. And so that's a higher bar than, say, what the typical individual human could do, which is obviously very economically important,” Hassabis noted.When asked whether AGI would emerge through gradual improvements or sudden breakthroughs, Hassabis said both approaches are “likely necessary.” “We push unbelievably hard on the scaling,” he explained, while also funding “blue sky” research such as AlphaEvolve. "Just as the internet shaped millennials and smartphones defined Gen Z, generative AI is the hallmark of Gen Alpha. Over the next 5 to 10 years, I think we're going to find what normally happens with big new technology shifts, which is that some jobs get disrupted. But new, more valuable, usually more interesting jobs get created," Hassabis added.On the podcast, he advised young people to familiarise themselves with AI tools and concepts sooner, noting, “Whatever happens with these AI tools, you'll be better off understanding how they work, and how they function, and what you can do with them.” He suggested a mindset shift for students preparing for university, encouraging them to become “ninjas” with the latest technologies: “Immerse yourself now,” he said. “Learning to learn is key.” While applauding these initiatives across the education sector, Hassabis cautioned that tech-savviness alone isn’t enough—he underscored the value of a solid STEM foundation, particularly coding, and broader “meta skills” like creativity, adaptability, and resilience.