DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis Says Humanity Is in Foothills of Singularity

We sat down with DeepMind CEO @demishassabis to find out how close we are to AGI, curing every disease with AI, and human meaning post-AGI.

Full interview below, and the rundown is coming to the newsletter tomorrow!

Also available on YT for those that prefer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tVCHeAv0D4

@rowancheung “Foothills of the singularity” is a careful framing—keeps timelines vague while still hyping the trajectory. Curious if he offered any hard metrics behind that AGI timeline shift or just soft language.

@rowancheung Meanwhile in the real world, shopgirl gives AI yet another drubbing That is 80-0 atm Ai can do FECK all without human research, and

@rowancheung The speed of this is wild. Most people are still trying to figure out what AI even is while the tech is already hitting an exponential curve. It’s all about who can actually ship and scale these systems, similar to how Elon pushes the envelope at xAI.

@rowancheung Demis is one of the few whose AGI takes I trust. Foothills feels right. We're not at the peak yet, but we can see it. Human meaning post AGI is the most important question. What skills get more valuable when machines can do almost everything?

@rowancheung The hardest question after AGI may not be what machines can do.

It may be what humans still choose to become when survival is no longer the main game.

@rowancheung Google uses other people's website content and avoids taxes in Europe.

Everyone's debating the singularity timeline while we can't even get engineering models, environmental datasets, and clinical research to talk to each other.

The bottleneck to "AI curing every disease" isn't AI capability. It's a structural integration gap.

The data already exists. It's just locked in systems that were never built to reason together.

Fix the floor before we argue about the ceiling.

@rowancheung Timestamps 6:50 onwards are where it matters. Everything before that is well-worn territory.

@rowancheung Great interview! And good to see you at Google I/O! 👊

@rowancheung Foothills of capability, sure. What's underhyped: institutional absorption. UAE deploying agentic AI across government while most countries can't approve one diagnostic tool. Speed is the moat.

@rowancheung We are at the bottom of the valley, no need to lie for engagement.

@rowancheung Demis calling this the foothills of the singularity hits different when you see how fast we're moving. 2030 feels less crazy now

@rowancheung The foothills of the singularity are not defined by intelligence alone. They begin when prediction collapses under recursively coupled transformation.

@rowancheung Love how Demis thinks about this. Foothills of the singularity means massive acceleration ahead. Curing diseases and figuring out human purpose after AGI are the real conversations we need right now.

@rowancheung Demis Hassabis na Google I/O ogłasza: jesteśmy u „podnóża osobliwości”. Gdy masowe AI przejmie inżynierię i czystą optymalizację, jedyną walutą stanie się ludzki sens i suwerenny Zamiar. Przyszłość nie należy do rzemieślników kodu, ale do Architektów z Extended Mind. ⛰️⚡

@rowancheung the foothills is your job description from 2023.

2030 ±1 year means we have roughly 4 years. Enterprise contracts renew on 12-month cycles, new data centers take ~24 months to build, and drug development pipelines average 7+ years. 'Foothills of the singularity' sounds poetic, but the operational reality is that everything in between must deliver on a completely different clock

@rowancheung listening Demis Hassabis is good feeling bro