NEW DELHI: The world is approaching a "threshold moment" in artificial intelligence, with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) potentially arriving within the next five years, said Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Thursday.
While speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Hassabis highlighted that general-purpose foundational AI models are improving at an unprecedented pace, becoming more capable almost week by week. He said this rapid advancement presents enormous opportunities for economic growth, productivity, and scientific progress.
"We're seeing these general-purpose, foundational model systems becoming increasingly capable almost week by week. This presents an incredible opportunity for economic growth, productivity, and scientific progress," said Hassabis, who is also a Chemistry Nobel winner for his AI research contributions towards protein structure prediction.
At the same time, he urged caution, emphasizing that humanity does not yet fully understand how this technology will develop or be deployed.
"We must approach this with humility, recognizing that we do not yet have all the answers about how this technology will develop or be deployed in the world," he added.
'Enormous change ahead'
Hassabis called the advent of AGI one of the most momentous periods in human history—comparable to the advent of fire or electricity.
According to him, one way to quantify it is that it may be roughly ten times the impact of the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding ten times faster—in a decade rather than a century.
"There is enormous change ahead, and it's still to be determined how we can ensure it benefits the whole world. I believe the main way to do this is by taking a scientific approach: using the scientific method to understand what these systems can do, building robust guardrails and monitoring systems, and ensuring these systems serve the purposes we intend," said Hassabis.
He also highlighted the great questions of science: the nature of reality, the nature of consciousness—these deep mysteries of the universe.
'Impressed by India's energy'
"I think AI can help us find answers to questions humanity has pondered for thousands of years. We, and others, are now working on many other branches of science to bring AI tools to material science, fusion, physics, and mathematics. In fact, almost every branch of science and medicine can be impacted by AI.
"We are already seeing the beginnings of this with systems like AlphaFold, which we built to solve the 50-year grand challenge of protein folding. We hope this will be just the first example of amazing advances in science and medicine enabled by AI," he added.
Talking about India, Hassabis said he was impressed by the country's energy and talent.
"It was inspiring to see this energy across the country, and I believe India will indeed be a powerhouse for AI worldwide. We have many partnerships—Sundar announced several Google collaborations with India—and I am especially proud of our deep partnership with Mr Ambani and the Reliance Jio Group to bring intelligence to everyone in India using our Gemini foundation models in collaboration with Reliance. We hope to build on this in the coming years."