Google AI CEO Denis Hassabis: Superintelligent AI won’t be a job-killer, will help humans ‘colonise the Galaxy’ in 5 years

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has made optimistic predictions regarding the future impact of artificial intelligence (AI). Hassabis stated that AGI — AI that is smarter than humans — will not lead to widespread job losses. Instead, he believes it will usher in a “golden era” for humanity, potentially enabling galactic colonisation that will start in five years. Hassabis envisions this future leading to “maximum human flourishing,” where humans “travel to the stars and colonise the galaxy.”“If everything goes well, then we should be in an era of radical abundance, a kind of golden era,” Hassabis stated in a recent interview with Wired. He asserted that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI with human-level intelligence — will drive this transformation. Hassabis indicated that DeepMind is “dead on track” to potentially create AGI within the next five to ten years.“AGI can solve what I call root-node problems in the world—curing terrible diseases, much healthier and longer lifespans, finding new energy sources,” Hassabis said.

Hassabis on job cuts due to AI

Addressing fears of widespread job displacement by advanced AGI models, Hassabis contended that he hasn’t witnessed much outcry about AI taking people’s jobs by saying that “new jobs are created that utilise new tools or technologies and are actually better.”“We’ll have these incredible tools that supercharge our productivity and actually almost make us a little bit superhuman,” Hassabis explained.He gave an example of healthcare, saying that AI tools will enhance human productivity rather than replace roles. “There’s a lot of things that we won’t want to do with a machine,” he said, adding that no one would want a robot nurse and that “human empathy aspect of that care that’s particularly humanistic.”