Demis Hassabis has issued a stark warning: highly powerful AI may be close, and humanity needs to do more to prepare.
In a short essay posted on X and Substack on Tuesday, the Google DeepMind CEO said there is a "precious window" to act before artificial general intelligence (AGI) arrives. AGI refers to AI that can perform cognitive tasks at or beyond human levels.
Hassabis proposed a US-led coalition that would review the most advanced models to ensure they're safe before public release. His comments follow recent interventions by the Trump administration to limit the release of AI models by OpenAI and Anthropic.
Hassabis has spoken for several years about the need for a formal body of experts to shepherd in AI's most cutting-edge breakthroughs, known as frontier models. His latest proposal for a "Standards Body" is also seemingly a response to the White House's more hands-on approach to regulating AI.
"The rapid progress we're seeing in AI requires a new approach to testing frontier AI model capabilities that is dynamic, adaptable, and rigorous," he wrote. "The US is well positioned, given its economic and technical standing, to take the first step in developing such a framework."
Hassabis said his proposed AI body might look like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a private, nonprofit Wall Street watchdog. Like FINRA, Hassabis suggested the AI standards body would most likely need to be industry-funded.
In his essay, Hassabis said AGI was "probably only a few short years away." Previously, he has predicted AGI could arrive as soon as 2030 and warned that not enough is being done to prepare for its arrival. "What's going to happen in the next five, 10-year timescale is going to be monumental," he said at Davos last year, "and I think that's not understood yet."
He has previously talked about gathering philosophers, economists, and other experts to consider the bigger-picture impacts of AI, which Hassabis sees as fast approaching.
"What values do we want to live by, what will meaning and purpose be, and how might even the human condition itself change?" he wrote in his Tuesday post. "Resolving these questions obviously cannot and should not be left to technologists alone. It requires every part of society to come together to help define this new chapter."
Now, Hassabis is making it clear that he thinks time is of the essence.
"What we collectively do now will determine how the next phase of civilisation unfolds," he wrote.
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