Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis has pulled his AGI timeline closer again. In a Wall Street Journal profile published this week, he says he now expects a system matching the full cognitive range of the human brain within two to three years — down from the three-to-five-year estimate he was giving earlier this year. 'It's soon,' he said. 'I'm updating nearer and nearer.'

His test for the milestone is characteristically concrete: whether a model trained only on knowledge available before 1901 could reproduce Einstein's 1905 papers. Hassabis, a chemistry Nobel laureate and former chess prodigy, is taking on a new role after a recent leadership shuffle at Google DeepMind while continuing to run Isomorphic Labs alongside it.

His framing of the stakes is measured: AI's risks are profound but addressable without hype in either direction — 'not all disaster, and not all nirvana.' Winning, in his words, means helping humanity steward AGI into the world safely and securely for the benefit of everyone.