The CEO of Google DeepMind has compared the IQ levels of contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) agents to domestic cats. “We’re still not even at cat intelligence yet, as a general system,” remarked Hassabis, answering a question about DeepMind’s progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, research is progressing fast, with some huge cash and compute investments propelling it forward. Some expect it to eclipse human intelligence in the next half-decade.
Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, made the artificial intelligence vs. cat IQ comparison in a public discussion with Tony Blair, one of Britain’s ex-Prime Ministers. The talk was part of the Future of Britain Conference 2024, organized by the Institute for Global Change.
Hassabis highlights that his work is not focused on AI but on AGI. It gives us more perspective on how he is looking at the computer vs cat comparison. Yes, a contemporary AI can sometimes write, paint, or make music in a convincingly human-like fashion, but an ordinary house cat has a lot more general intelligence. “At the moment, we’re far from Human-level intelligence across the board,” admitted Hassabis. “But in certain areas like games playing [AI is] better than the best people in the world.”
On the potential of AI to shape our lives, Hassabis boldly reckons that it will be as big as the Industrial Revolution or the harnessing of fire or electricity. In the future, and more specifically, the DeepMind CEO thinks one of the most exciting ways AI will become a leading light will be accelerating scientific discovery in energy, materials science, health care, climate, and mathematics – and it is already doing this. Interestingly, he said we were all talking about ‘big data’ in the noughties, and AI systems are the answer.
Hassabis took the opportunity to plug a DeepMind project called Project Astra. This removes AI from the restrictions of being a mere Chatbot like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, with much more awareness of a user’s situation, environment, preferences, history, and so on. In this way, Project Astra aims to deliver a ‘universal AI agent’ that is helpful in everyday life.
Meanwhile, the biggest hurdles remaining for outfits like DeepMind and human-level AGI achievements include planning, memory, tool use, and smart questioning. The DeepMind CEO knows that big breakthroughs and compute scaling are still needed for AGIs to achieve human IQ levels.
