Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is likely to arrive before the end of the decade and argued that its impact could rank alongside the discovery of electricity or fire.
In a blog post published Tuesday on X, Hassabis wrote that AGI is "probably only a few short years away" and described it as a technology that could reshape human civilization.
Hassabis repeats his AGI timeline
This is the second time this year that Hassabis has predicted AGI will arrive before 2030. This time, he framed it not as just another computing milestone, but as a turning point on a different scale.
"When we look back on this time in the decades to come, I think we will realise we were standing in the foothills of the singularity–nothing less than the dawning of a new age for humanity," he wrote.
Hassabis said AGI—the point when computers can understand, learn, and perform a wide range of tasks as well as or better than humans—should not be compared only with advances such as the internet or mobile computing because its reach could be even broader.
"It is much more akin to the discovery of electricity or fire," he wrote. "If you stop to think about it, we’ve essentially found a way to make sand think. It’s miraculous."
He says risk management is lagging behind capability gains
Even with that upbeat view, Hassabis warned that AI capabilities are moving faster than society’s ability to understand them and manage the dangers they bring.
He pointed to cybersecurity threats that already exist with today’s frontier models and said future systems could introduce biological, nuclear, and other national security risks.
As AI becomes more agentic and more capable of self-improvement, he argued that stronger technical safeguards will be needed to make sure humans stay in control.
"On the horizon, we will need robust safeguards to maintain control of increasingly agentic, recursively self-improving systems–and tackle unknown issues that will only become clearer over time," he wrote.
Broader AI industry warnings have accelerated since ChatGPT’s launch
Hassabis’ comments come as leading AI executives have spent much of the past year, following the public launch of ChatGPT in 2022, warning that AGI may arrive sooner than many expected.
In January 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said human-level AI could emerge within one to five years and warned that governments were underestimating the pace of development. In June, Hassabis also said AGI would arrive by 2030 and cautioned that society did not have much time to prepare.
A proposal for a U.S. Frontier AI Standards Body
To respond to those concerns, Hassabis proposed creating a U.S. Frontier AI Standards Body modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, the private organization that oversees U.S. brokerage firms.
Under his proposal, the body would operate as a federally supervised public-private partnership, funded primarily by the AI industry and staffed by independent technical experts and open-source representatives who would evaluate frontier AI models.
"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."
His proposal follows earlier calls for stronger oversight
Hassabis’ proposal follows similar demands from other prominent figures in the AI industry for oversight of advanced systems.
In May 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary that a federal agency should license powerful AI systems and require independent safety audits. More recently, last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a voluntary framework to review advanced AI models before release. During that same month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI was becoming too powerful and said rules similar to those used by the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, were needed.
He says the window to set common standards is limited
Despite the regulatory push, Hassabis said the world has only a narrow window to put common standards in place before AGI arrives.
"The future is not yet written, we must use this precious window before AGI arrives to shape this technology for the benefit of all humanity," he wrote. "What we collectively do now will determine how the next phase of civilisation unfolds. By safely stewarding AGI into the world, we can enter a new golden age of scientific discovery and progress, and usher in a bright future of incredible human flourishing."