Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis: The Path To AGI, LLM Creativity, And Google Smart Glasses

Q&A with the Google AI head and Nobel laureate on the state of artificial intelligence today, and where it’s heading.

Demis Hassabis is refreshingly measured when discussing the path toward AGI, or human-level artificial intelligence.

The Google DeepMind CEO and recent Nobel Prize winner doesn’t believe any research house will reach AGI this year, and he’s quick to call out those who hype the technology in the name of business goals. But that doesn’t mean he’s not ambitious.

In a wide-ranging interview at Google DeepMind offices in London, Hassabis laid out his vast plans for building smarter AIs, putting Google’s assistants in smart glasses, and using AI to develop virtual cells to attack disease. He also spoke plainly about the challenge of getting LLMs to be creative, and how recent models have tried to deceive their evaluators.

You can listen to (or watch) our full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify (now with video), your podcast app of choice, or YouTube. And the full transcript of our conversation is below, edited lightly for length and clarity.

In this Q&A, Hassabis delivers a masterful deep dive into the state of artificial intelligence today and what’s to come, and I hope you give it a listen or read:

Alex Kantrowitz: Every AI research house is working toward building AGI, or human-level artificial intelligence. Where are we right now in the progression and how long will it to take to get there?

Demis Hassabis: There’s been an incredible amount of progress over the last few years, and actually, over the last decade plus. We’ve been working on this for more than 20 years, and we’ve had a consistent view about AGI being a system that’s capable of exhibiting all the cognitive capabilities humans can. I think we’re getting closer and closer, but we’re still probably a handful of years away.

What is it going to take to get there?

The models today are pretty capable, but there are still some missing attributes: things like reasoning, hierarchical planning, long-term memory. There’s…