Demis Hassabis Now Says AGI Could Arrive Within Two to Three Years

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind, told The Wall Street Journal Magazine that he now expects artificial general intelligence (AGI) to arrive within two to three years. The interview was published on October 21, 2026, as part of the magazine's "Innovator in Tech" awards package, where Hassabis was named the 2026 honoree in technology.

Asked about the timeline, Hassabis said it was coming soon and that his estimate kept shifting closer to the present, according to the profile. The new window marks a tightening from the three-to-five-year range he had publicly cited earlier in 2026.

What Hassabis means by AGI

Hassabis defines AGI as human-level cognition and has described a specific benchmark he calls the "Einstein test." Under this test, a system would qualify as AGI if, trained only on human knowledge available up to 1901, it could independently produce the kind of breakthroughs Albert Einstein made in his 1905 "annus mirabilis" papers — covering the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and mass-energy equivalence.

In the WSJ Magazine profile, Hassabis also described his broader mission in two steps: first solving intelligence itself, then using that intelligence to address other major scientific problems. He pointed to physics research and cancer treatment as early applications he hopes to pursue once more advanced AI systems are available.

A timeline that has moved during 2026

Hassabis's public statements about AGI's arrival shifted over the course of 2026. At Google's I/O developer conference on May 20, 2026, he said AI had reached what he called the foothills of the singularity, clarifying that he meant the current era rather than a single moment of transformation. At that event he also said agents and coding tools had begun working effectively during the year, describing it as an early stage of practical AI use.

Isomorphic Labs and the regulation debate

The WSJ Magazine profile also touched on Isomorphic Labs, a drug-discovery company founded by Hassabis that applies AlphaFold-style AI models to drug discovery. The company was reported to be in discussions to raise more than $2 billion in funding at a valuation of roughly $40 billion to $50 billion.

On the question of AI oversight, the profile described Hassabis arguing against premature regulation of the technology, a position consistent with his push during 2026 for industry development to continue while governance frameworks are worked out alongside it.

Why Hassabis's view carries weight

Hassabis leads Google DeepMind's AI research. In October 2024, he and DeepMind colleague John Jumper shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, an AI model that predicts three-dimensional protein structures from genetic sequences; the other half of that prize went to David Baker. The Nobel committee at the time described the achievement as fulfilling a long-pursued goal in protein science.

Because AGI has no single agreed scientific definition, Hassabis's timeline reflects his own benchmark — the Einstein test — rather than an industry-wide standard. Other AI leaders have offered different definitions and timelines, which the sources reviewed for this article did not detail in comparable terms.