Demis Hassabis: AGI is Years Away and Needs Regulation
TorturedPoet30 · reddit · 2026-07-14
DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis published a lengthy article discussing AGI trends and safety frameworks. He noted that AGI could be achieved within the next few years. We are currently at the "foot of the singularity," and its impact will be comparable to the discovery of electricity and fire, expected to bring a transformation "10 times the scale of the Industrial Revolution and 10 times as fast."
Simultaneously, he warned that frontier AI systems could pose severe risks in cybersecurity, biology, and autonomous agents. To address this, he proposed a regulatory framework:
- Establish a frontier AI standards body: Similar to the financial industry's self-regulatory organization FINRA, dedicated to evaluating the most advanced models.
- Implement pre-release testing: Recommends starting with voluntary pre-release safety testing for AGI, gradually evolving into mandatory requirements for US frontier labs, and eventually expanding globally.
- Unified applicable standards: This framework should apply to both open-source and closed-source models, requiring labs to share models for evaluation before deployment.
He emphasized that AGI development must be guided by scientific evaluation, international cooperation, and responsible deployment.
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