Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Googe's DeepMind, predicts the arrival of AI with human-level cognitive capabilities in as early as a few years.
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything festival, Hassabis acknowledged that "progress in the last few years has been pretty incredible."
- Hassabis said artificial general intelligence (AGI), when AI becomes as intellectually capable as humans, "could be just a few years, maybe within a decade away."
- He told the WSJ that recent advancements in AI would help improve computer assistants and other AI software programs.
- Hassabis likened the debut of the next generation of assistant technology, which will be based on AI algorithms, to the launch of Apple's iPhone, stating that it will be a significant shift.
- Google recently announced that it's folding its AI-focused "Brain" team and its DeepMind AI lab into a single unit to help accelerate its AI progress.
- Hassabis is leading the merged unit, which consolidates Google's AI research under a single umbrella.
- Google bought DeepMind in 2014 for $500M.
