Hassabis Pushes for Independent AI Safety Body Amid AGI Development Race
Demis Hassabis, co-founder and former CEO of Google DeepMind, is pushing for an independent organization to establish safety standards for AI development. He has been discussing this proposal with senior U.S. government officials and executives at other leading AI companies.
Hassabis' plan centers on an industry-supported organization that could establish common safety standards and best practices as companies race towards artificial general intelligence, or AGI. This effort comes amid an intensifying competition among Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and other tech companies to develop AI systems capable of performing intellectual tasks at or beyond human levels.
Hassabis has compared aspects of the proposed framework to international efforts used to promote cooperation and establish safeguards in other potentially transformative fields. He has suggested creating an industry-funded standards organization modeled in part on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, which oversees U.S. brokerage firms.