In conversation with former UK prime minister Sir Tony Blair at a conference in London, Sir Demis detailed his vision of a world significantly changed by the power of AI
The British founder of Google DeepMind, Sir Demis Hassabis, has claimed that the development of artificial general intelligence – AI with human-level intellect – has the potential to be “one of the biggest inventions humanity will ever make”.
In conversation with former UK prime minister Sir Tony Blair at the Tony Blair Institute’s Future of Britain conference in London, Sir Demis detailed his vision of a world significantly changed by the power of AI. It has implications not just for labour and productivity through digital assistants but can also “accelerate scientific discovery”, which he said has “huge implications in drug discovery and disease understanding”.
He added: “If we could replicate that and make intelligence an abundant tool, it would be unbelievably transformative there’d be almost nothing that you couldn’t use that for if you built that in a general way. So to me, it’s been obvious for many, many years that if AI could if it was possible and it seems that it is (reach) this general kind of human-level AI we sometimes call artificial general intelligence, it would transform everything.”
Sir Demis compared the potential upheaval brought about by AI to the Industrial Revolution. He added: “So it will be at least as big as the Industrial Revolution, possibly bigger, more like the advent of electricity or even fire. I think it has the potential to be one of the biggest inventions humanity will ever make.”
DeepMind founder, Sir Demis, and former Prime Minister, Sir Tony, have discussed the potential of AI to enhance public services by harnessing vast amounts of data, particularly within the NHS. Sir Demis suggested that AI systems could assist clinical staff in making better use of the extensive data available to them.
He proposed that AI could “triage” data consumption, allowing “the experts, whether they’re doctors or nurses, to focus on what they do best”. Sir Tony added: “When you look at something like the National Health Service, we should be able to take all the data that there is within the healthcare system and both use it in order to analyse what’s happening in our healthcare system, so help policy, but secondly, to be able to create digital assistants where a doctor or a nurse is able to call on all the accumulated knowledge in our country and indeed elsewhere.”
He also envisioned a future where patients have access to not just their own health information, but also potential treatment options. The former PM urged governments, including the new Labour Government, to “reserve a bit of space for thinking about this (AI) because it is a revolution and it will change everything”.
